Air Port Security

July 2002 

The question playing on the news today is “SHOULD THERE BE SECURITY CHECKPOINTS AT AIRPORT ENTRANCES”? Are you kidding? Let’s use some logic and examine how the “Law of Unintended Consequences” would play out here.

I flew domestic out of LAX a few months ago and the line outside the terminal to get into the building took half and hour! A gunman in a taxicab could have driven by and opened fire and killed many people. Moving the line from the building to the street so that we wait in our cars will not help and will in fact hurt because does anyone think that the lines at the terminal will now vanish? Security screeners are missing test weapons being carried in a couple of carry-on pieces of luggage at the x-ray machines in the air conditioned terminal, do you think they will stop anymore standing around curbside under the hot sun or pouring rain? Anyone remember the gunman (a “middle-eastern” man between the age of 20 to 50) that walked down the line of cars outside of CIA headquarters while he shot and killed people in their cars as they waited for the light to change? Plus how much “road rage” will we see as the lines of cars backup at the entrance to the airport and out onto surface streets as cars are bottlenecked trying to get through.

Life is not a safe warm blanket and never has been. Will bad (and good) things happen to people? Yes. Can we take proper precautions against harm? Yes. I tell my kids to look both ways before they cross the street. In this instance my kids are “profiling” for autos not other pedestrians in determining level of danger so the sooner we as a society get over this ridiculous nonsense that profiling is bad the sooner we can begin to establish prudent security.

I suffer fools poorly and I am sure that many others felt revulsion at the foolish comment made by Sen. Chuck Schumer a few months ago when he said that profiling by race was bad but that profiling by nationality was ok. What does he expect everyone to do, walk around with a national flag of origin stuck in a their lapel or tattooed to their forehead? I would say to Chuckie and others with this thought bouncing around in their vacuous heads to apply some simple logic to the situation before they spout off.

When the Federal building was taken down in Oklahoma the authorities started to examine and dare I say “profile” members of self-styled “Militia” groups. They were not looking at Grandmas pushing sixty in their hunt for the culprits. They were looking at white males between the ages of 20 and 50 so why is it different when the current probable culprit will be a “Middle-eastern” looking man aged between 20 to 50. Maybe the issue is that White males are so used to having their ox gored that our complaints don’t get play in the media or maybe it is due to the fact that there is not a White Male Anti-Defamation League. In any case we as a society need to get over our petty sensitives. If probable cause exists the authorities should be able to question without the level of complaint we are currently seeing. If a car with a white male aged 20 to 50 was observed driving slowly down a city street at midnight and stopped to converse with and pick up a “pedestrian” for a drive around the corner the police would have cause to stop and question him because somehow I do not see him as simply being a good Samaritan giving a hitchhiker a ride.

Come on America lets apply some logic and thought to our actions rather than simply react spastically to stimuli.

David W. Riddle
Mesa, Arizona