Got a response from Robert F. Selig:

Thanks for taking the time to express your concerns. I agree that "this isn't my America" either. But, without going into the details (I simply can't), security at airports continues to intensify and the knowledge about the level of surveillance being conducted by those who threaten our country, that has been made public over the past few months, has required a significant level of increased vigilance. It is my hope that while we restrict someone's freedom to take a picture of an airplane, we are also limiting the capability to plan the destruction of our airport.

In the end, we are all simply responding to a situation that we didn't create.
Accordingly we need to remember that our friends in the Middle East are the enemy not the Airport Police who are risking their lives every day to ensure our freedom of travel for us and our children.

Bob Selig

Robert F. Selig, AAE
Executive Director
Capital Region Airport Authority
4100 Capital City Blvd.
Lansing, MIM- 48906
Phone:M- 517-886-3711
Fax:M- M- M- M- M- 517-321-6197
Email:M- [email protected]


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I'm favorably impressed to receive a real reply within a short period of time. Of course he's spouting the same nonsense that we hear from the other freedom-haters in our country: that keeping people from looking at things which are plainly in public view is somehow an anti-terrorism activity. And he doesn't address the main question I asked him, which is: Why did the airport police LIE to Robert Ball and invent a non-existent federal regulation, and does Robert Selig condone that kind of lie?

"...risking their lives..."? Oh, please! Does anybody take this nonsense seriously?

Bruce

Apparently Bob Selig does. Talk about your small-town rubes...

I'd like to reply to Mr. Selig's letter by telling him to go shove it. I doubt that he or any of his goons have the slightest understanding of what putting their lives on the line on a daily basis actually entails.

The attitude conveyed in that letter reminds me of the attitude conveyed by someone else... Does anyone remember the self-important guy who was the head of IAD security in the second Die Hard movie? That character seemed pretty "out of it" most of the time, and so does Mr. Selig.

While I personally don't wish for any terrorist activity to occur, I also wish for (and believe) that personal freedoms should be paramount to any fears, real or imagined. To me, this means that people should be allowed to stand on public property and photograph planes and the airport all they want. After all, pictures can do no harm.

Perhaps if Mr. Selig and his crack team of meter maids were more on the ball, they wouldn't have to lie to citizens and kick them off public property where they have a right to be?

It is hilarious. "Airport cop" looks like the easiest police gig around. There's more danger involved in being a school cop.

Ever been an airport cop Bruce? It can be a dangerous job like any other LE job. I have two very good friends who were airport cops and have arrested rapists, armed robbers (in the process of), vehicle thieves and a host of other criminals. There are often car chases with drunks and car thieves.

I know it is not nearly as risky as being an accountant but there is always a risk of death and serious injury when you are charged with making arrests and someone decides "I'm not being arrested today".

Not a park, but OKC has an area on the SE side of the property paved & seems always inhabited by airplane-watchers. Used to sit on the S side of DAL (near Koehler warehouse?) with toddler daughters plane-watching to kill time before picking up wife at work. Wonder if that's still allowed?

Hey: two cute kids, one-car family, working wife & me a FT student. Where did I go wrong?

ABQ has an "Aircraft Observation" spot up on a hill just before you turn off for the car rental center. Great views of the terminal and runways. And since ABQ and Kirtland AFB share the same runways, you get great better views of the arriving/departing a/c than if you were on base!

Hopefully it involves more than arresting school teachers with book marks. It'd be a shame to put all their cool tactical gear and SWAT style training to waste pulling over speeders and telling people not to park in the drop off areas for "security" reasons.

Hey gang, let's not be bashing LEOs here. Anybody who straps a gun on their hip everyday as part of their basic equipment list has a job that most of us wouldn't want in a million years or we'd be doing it. So let's chill out on the personal attacks.

What we should be addressing is one more example of inconsistent / overzealous application of whatever rules are out there. Either observing airports / aircraft is ok, or it isn't. And banning that is ridiculous unless you start building airports in the middle of nowhere (like DEN) because anyone can pull up a chair under a flight path within a mile of the airport and look at low and slow planes in most metro areas.

Making up the rules location by location leads to stupid policies like this and then dumb reasoning for the application of the policy. Falling back on a rationale that is incorrect ("it's Federal law") is no different than getting fired by a manager who blames it on somebody else ("hey, I had nothing to do with this, THEY made me do it") when you dang well know he made the call. If the LAN security dude wants to keep people away from his airport, then he should say so. "Hey folks, we realize that LAN is a Podunk little airport and no terrorist in his right mind would even bother with us, but we also have three guys to secure 200 acres with a four mile perimeter and frankly, if something happens here, or somewhere else because we didn't do something, it's my rear end and not yours and I don't want that hanging over my head." Then he should say, "Tell you what. If you want to watch the planes, here's the place we'd like you to be. We built a little gravel lot over here and you can still see everything going on (and we have a camera on it so we can see you) -- and because we want some friendly eyes on the airport to help us out, we put up some bleachers and a porta-john over there too. But please don't go hanging out at the fence."

Tremendous post. THAT is a well done, well thought-out resolution to this problem. Slamming LEOs doesn't cut it any more than "it is the law" does.

And your experience as a LEO is.........?

It is exactly what I have claimed it is: non existent.

I was simply expressing my sympath for cops with boring beats. When a young kid grows up and wants to be a cop, he wants to be on the SWAT team; not parking enforcement at an airport.

If the airport has a good budget, then the airport PD can get all the fancy toys; and practice bomb techniques on unattended bags.

Besides; the more crime cops find at airports, the more their departments get in asset forfeitures.

I'm sure somebody with real LEO experience will weigh in and tell me how wrong I really am.

Fair enough, but with any job in LE you are going to be bored for the majority of the time. After awhile you begin to pray for boredom...

Law dawg,

What's the scoop with making up laws? Are you allowed to tell people they are breaking xyz law when such a law doesn't exist at all? Is that just pushing the line of ethical, is it unethical, or is it perfectly acceptable and something you'd talk about openly with your colleagues?