"Airport Police May Prove Unprepared For Terrorism In The Terminal"

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

The Vulnerable Front Door
Airport Police May Prove Unprepared For Terrorism In The Terminal 
By Andrea Stone
The Huffington Post


WASHINGTON -- The video is graphic. Machine-gun toting terrorists emerge
from an elevator and move methodically through the busy airport terminal,
mowing down travelers, police and everyone else in their way.

"When I show it in my airport security training courses, there are usually
only a few people who are familiar with it," says Jeffrey Price, who teaches
aviation management at Metropolitan State College of Denver. "[There is]
hardly any airport that's prepared to defend against it."

The violent clip, it turns out, is from the controversial "Modern Warfare"
video game series. But the fictional scenario -- terrorists attacking
airports -- has played out in real life. Terrorist groups have staged
assaults on airports across Europe in recent years, including an attack that
killed two U.S. airmen in Frankfurt last year, and a suicide bomb attack in
Moscow that left dozens dead.

Terrorists haven't ignored U.S. airports, either. On July 4, 2002, a gunman
killed two people at the El Al ticket counter at Los Angeles International
Airport. More recently, in 2007, federal authorities broke up a plot to blow
up fuel tanks at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Terrorists can strike anywhere -- from Times Square to a civil rights march
in Spokane, Wash. But despite spending billions of dollars to make air
travel safer since Al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four airplanes on Sept. 11,
2001, law enforcement agencies are unprepared for a major attack inside an
airport, some security experts warn. Complacency, other priorities and lack
of funding, they say, have combined to create vulnerability in a place the
public assumes is one of the most secure of all.

The main mission of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is to
keep weapons and explosives off of airplanes -- a mandate that has led to
the rise of full-body scanners, banned liquids, intrusive pat-downs and
complaints over profiling.

The job of guarding the terminal, patrolling the airport parking lot and
watching the fence around the runways, however, belongs to state and local
authorities.

"The federal government doesn't tell you how to do security," says Thomas
Kinton, a consultant who was aviation director at Boston's Logan
International Airport on 9/11 and is a former head of the Massachusetts Port
Authority.

The TSA sets minimum security standards at airports and provides some
training to outside security officers from these state and local
authorities. "Airport security is a shared responsibility, and airports and
airlines are required to adhere to TSA-approved security standards," the TSA
said in a statement to HuffPost. "TSA does not employ airport police
officers, but works closely with airports to incorporate local law
enforcement into an overall TSA-approved security plan."

In other words, Kinton explains, "it is up to each airport" to decide how
much security it will provide.

Some of the larger airport authorities, such as the Port Authority of New
York & New Jersey, have their own specially trained police forces. Many
others, though, rely on the state or local law enforcement agencies for
airport security.

Many big city police departments view the airport as "just another strategic
facility" to protect along with power plants, train stations and sports
stadiums, says Rafi Ron, a former head of security at Israel's Ben Gurion
International Airport who has advised the TSA and airport authorities.

In a time of tight government budgets, such law enforcement has neither the
resources nor the motivation, Ron says, to make airports a top priority.
Federal spending on passenger and baggage screening and other homeland
security measures has soared since 2001, but strapped state and city budgets
mean "funding shortages have forced many airports to operate at the minimum
local legal threshold," Ron told Congress last year.

As a result, he says, "The so-called tired and weary end up at the airport,"
with officers viewing the post as just a stop along the way to retirement.

Price, the aviation management professor, also says that -- with a few
exceptions like Boston's Logan and the three airports in the New York area
-- "many airport police forces are staffed with those waiting to retire, or
'retired-on-active-duty' (known as derisively ROAD) or are the 'problem
children' and workers comp cases that have been transferred off the streets
to the airport. They are not well equipped nor adequately trained to handle
a multi-force active shooter attack."

There are no official statistics on the average age of airport police, or
what bearing that may have on job performance. But a Boston Globe report
soon after 9/11 found the average age of Massachusetts state troopers
assigned to Logan was 50 years, compared to 41 years statewide.

Kinton said several efforts to end the seniority system, by which older law
enforcement officers get first dibs on airport jobs, have gone nowhere. "If
you want to be better and be the best of the best," he says, "there are
better ways to do it."

Robert Raffel, former public safety director at Orlando International
Airport, notes that airports tend to attract older police officers. He says
airports also try to save money by contracting out some jobs such as
guarding exit gates to cheaper, private security firms.

But Raffel insists that if a terrorist is determined and suicidal, "I'm not
sure any police organization could respond in a robust manner before they
got close to that airplane, I don't care what kind of shape they are in."

Jack Riley, vice president of the National Security Research Division at
RAND, rejects the idea that airports are "a dumping ground" for worn-out
cops and says the threat is exaggerated. "When you look at terrorist
infrastructure incidents across the globe," he says, "terrorists are more
likely to attack targets like rail, buses, and public squares than targets
like airports."

A House subcommittee hearing last year on airport perimeter security,
however, shed light on thousands of security breaches at airports. Airline
stowaways, bypassed checkpoints and tarmac drunk drivers have made splashy
headlines -- even as a recent report by the Department of Homeland
Security's inspector general said many security breaches are never even
reported to the TSA.

The breaches are serious, says Ron. "Think instead of a drunk driver that
could have been a suicide bomber with a car full of explosives."

But the headlines tell only part of the story. "We are far less prepared for
an active shooter in the terminal than we should be," Price says. "Frankly,
if you ask me, that's what Congress should be investigating."

In Europe, where national governments take responsibility for security at
most airports, lessons learned a generation ago still carry force.

For instance, travelers passing through Rome's Leonardo da Vinci Airport,
where 16 people were killed by Palestinian terrorists in 1985, still see
heavily armed police wearing body armor and toting automatic weapons. While
similarly equipped police were common at U.S. airports in the days and
months following 9/11, today they are a rare sight, and usually only during
periods of heightened alert.

"A key line of defense is deterrence," Price has written. "An alert,
well-trained, well-equipped police force patrolling the public areas of a
terminal building, like they do in Rome, can be a huge deterrent to a
suicide bomber."

Ron says specially trained police with the "right background, right level of
fitness, right training, right weapon" can make a difference. That is a
lesson Israel learned 40 years ago when Lod Airport, now known as Ben
Gurion, was targeted by Japanese Red Army terrorists who killed 26 people.
It was the first -- and last -- attack on Israel's only international
airport.

"One of the lessons learned by Israel at the time is that airport security
is just as critical as securing [the airplane]," Ron says. "Are the police
departments at U.S. airports providing adequate security? Largely speaking,
the answer is no."

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