Time to ‘fish or cut bait’ on airport security, alderman says

An influential alderman said Tuesday it’s time for Chicago to “fish or cut bait” on the issue of airport security—either by allowing aviation security officers to carry weapons or by privatizing their jobs.

Ald. Mike Zalewski (23rd), chairman of the City Council’s Aviation Committee, was incensed by the email directive issued to aviation security officers after a shooter killed five people in the baggage claim area at an airport in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

The unarmed officers were told they would not be dispatched to disturbances in unsecured areas of O’Hare and Midway airports, including check-in and baggage claim. But they would continue to handle disturbances in secure areas beyond the Transportation Security Administration checkpoint.

Thirteen months ago, those same aviation security officers were told to run or “hide” if shootings break out, leaving Chicago Police officers to handle those dangerous situations.

“You have this entire layer of aviation security officers. There’s always an explanation why they cannot be armed. Yet we’re having incident after incident at airports. You’d think we’d want even more security,” Zalewski said Tuesday.

“We need to get aldermen, the Police Department and the aviation commissioner together and make a decision once and for all. Is there a real, solid excuse why they should not be carrying guns?”

Zalewski noted that Ald. Chris Taliaferro (29th), a former Chicago Police officer, has an ordinance buried in committee to arm aviation security officers.

“Perception is reality. People are looking at this saying, ‘Why are we not allowing them to give us that extra layer of security? Why did we hire them? Why put them through 40 hours of training?” Zalewski said.

“If we need to increase that training to allow them to carry guns, let’s do it. But this perception they’re just out there and not allowed to help us in an emergency is getting to be a nuisance. We need to put it to bed one way or another. If it’s just another layer of private security, maybe it’s time to privatize” their jobs.

Aviation Department spokesman Owen Kilmer said safety and security of airport passengers and employees is a “top priority” for the city. But he hinted strongly that the city’s plan does not include arming airport security officers.

“The Department of Aviation works closely with the Chicago Police Department – the designated law enforcement officer at O’Hare and Midway International airports – to help keep travelers and employees safe,” Kilmer wrote in an email.

“CPD takes the lead on coordinating with Aviation and Federal law enforcement officials to provide safety initiatives passengers see and don’t see, and the effectiveness of this approach was recently witnessed with the swift arrest at O’Hare last week of a non-ticketed passengers.”

Zalewski said it’s absurd to dismiss the aviation security officers as bumbling Barney Fife’s incapable of carrying weapons and providing legitimate security.

“Several of these aviation security officers live in my ward. Some of these guys look like Marines to me,” he said.

“I heard from a very prominent businessman in my ward that, in Fort Lauderdale, they were looking for anybody to help them. It makes no sense for us to pay these people and tell them not to get involved when a dangerous situation hits.”

The controversy over whether aviation security officers should be armed has been kicking around for nearly 20 years.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept, 11, 2001 put airport security under the microscope, Finance Committee Chairman Edward M. Burke (14th) questioned the wisdom of spending $11 million-a-year on an army of highly-trained officers empowered to make arrests, but not allowed to carry weapons.

“Why would you have National Guard troops that are not peace officers–who are certainly not trained by the Chicago Police Academy–carrying sidearms, when your own 294 aviation security officers are not armed?” Burke asked then.

“It makes no sense. . . . It would seem to me like sending off the Marines on a mission without giving them their rifles.”

Burke was not appeased when a deputy aviation commissioner told him the 200 aviation security officers assigned to O’Hare and their 94 counterparts at Midway were responsible for “perimeter security”–not law enforcement.

He was told that each officer was assigned to a “specific post where they act as a visible deterrent as well as an initial point of information” for law enforcement officers, but they were not asked to make arrests or engage in forcible restraint.

“So I guess when Mr. Terrorist comes rolling up to the gate with a bomb, the aviation security officer is supposed to say, ‘Hold on. Just a minute. I’m going to call the Chicago Police,’” Burke said then.

The remark prompted then-Aviation Commissioner Thomas Walker to say that the city would be “re-examining in the new climate the need to have armed guards at other locations, including these checkpoints.”

It never happened.

Then-Mayor Richard M. Daley shot down the idea of allowing Aviation Department security officers to carry guns.

“Everybody would like to have a weapon in America. . . . I’ve got people at City Hall who would like to be armed. . . .There’s an attitude that, if you have the gun,” you have the power, Daley said then.

“I’m very cautious about arming many, many people out there.. . . The airports are not the issue. The issue [in the terrorist hijackings] was the plane and the cockpit. That’s what they have to correct.”

Daley argued then that aviation security officers were responsible for securing airport entrances, not people.

“They’re on the perimeter. They’re really checking fences and things like that. They check employees coming in,” he said.

“We have police officers there. We don’t need them. They’re a different type of police officer.. . . There’s no problem whatsoever [with airport security]. There’s never been a problem in the past, and there isn’t a problem now.”

In 2006, the controversy resurfaced after an intoxicated man sneaked onto the tarmac at Midway and forced the brief closing of a runway.