Hypothetical:

You are not armed and have no body armor but you are an FAA employee. You have no radio or police backup within sight. I would like you to go verify the identity of an *armed* man who you *know* is carrying a pistol. Be advised, that if he is NOT who he says he is, then he is very possibly an EXTREMELY lethal threat.

No offense, but I'd have pretty strong reservations about doing any such thing, and I've physically taken down armed people before. If you expect some non-combatant, non hand-to-hand trained FAA line personnel to do this you're asking an awful lot. The response was slow in coming, but the decision NOT to confront directly was, in my view, probably the correct one.

What really needs to change is the speed of reaction. We have to get away from a beareaucratic response mentality (up the decision to someone else) and change it to a damage control mentality. React, Contain, Deal with. What needs to be worked on is the ability to have a working panic button "all stop" system (with accountability for accidents etc), and the ability to reset fairly quickly. That keeps it from getting to the point where people are already on planes.

An analogy: Think about a security checkpoint as a pebble, then think about the expanded airport area as the ripples in a pnd from a dropped pebble. As time goes on the circle become wider. Right now, we have to figure the maximum distance a person can travel and increase the control area by that much per second. So rather than evacuating the whole airport, you simply stop further progression at a break point some distance in from the security point.

You hold everyone at the area where they are and walk the dog through. If the weapon is handed off, dropped or concealed the dog will find it. If not, you can back *those* people up back to security (or set up a provisional CP at that area and clear them out and closer to the gates).

This is one possible solution and not a complete one, but you get the idea. We're treating each breach like a four alarm blaze, instead of a brush fire. We need to stop doing that, and start using escalation techniques.

Regards,
-Bouncer-

[This message has been edited by Bouncer (edited 02-08-2002).]