On most days, an estimated 10,000 people are in the Honolulu Airport complex as passengers, employees or visitors, according to its owner and operator, the state Department of Transportation (DOT).
Given the heavy traffic flow — flights touching down and departing on 27 international and domestic carriers, three interisland airlines and four commuter airlines — security is an ever-present concern.
In the aftermath of last week’s incident in which a private security company officer shot and killed a pet dog at the airport, the state must underscore its attention to facility safety with a prompt review and assessment of the division of labor regarding airport security.
According to Securitas Security Services USA Inc., one of its officers shot the 2-year-old pit bull mix, which was loose and had attempted to attack the officer Friday evening in an area near the international arrivals terminal and the Hawaiian Airlines check-in area. The dog’s owner said it had been chained to a coconut tree and broke free. But she has denied that the dog was behaving in an aggressive manner.
While the incident’s he-said-she-said details are being sorted out, the Transportation Department must take a hard look at its policies tied to employing private security guards, who are now picking up several duties previously reserved for sheriff’s deputies.
Since 1999, the state Department of Public Safety’s Airport Sheriff Detail has been tasked with law enforcement and policing services at the airport. Securitas first landed a contract to provide security services about 10 years ago. Last year, friction between the two contractors — fixed to questions about whether private security guards are qualified or legally authorized to have police powers — prompted the deputies’ union, the Hawaii Government Employees Association, to file a lawsuit challenging Securitas’ contract.
The union maintains that initially Securitas officers wore uniforms and drove vehicles marked as “Securitas” or “Airport Security,” and their services were limited to checkpoint, fence and entry-way areas, ensuring vehicles don’t linger at dropoff and pickup points. But over time DOT expanded their role — and last year the state had the uniforms and vehicles labeled with a new ID: “Airport Police.”
For the sake of the serious matter of public confidence in airport security, the state should be compelled to explain any promotion in responsibilities. What does so-called airport police training consist of? What are the job qualifications?
According to the union, the DOT now designates some officers to: carry weapons and make arrests at the airport and on planes; ticket motorists and pedestrians for traffic violations; and act as first-responders to security breach incidents, medical emergencies and other situations. Particularly worrisome is the lawsuit’s assertion that Honolulu Airport is the only facility within the Federal Aviation Administration’s “Category X” high-volume grouping that allows privately contracted personnel to provide first-responder “law enforcement and policing services.”
According to state Sen. Will Espero, the officer who shot the pit bull is now being investigated for second-degree reckless endangering, and was previously fired as a civilian police officer for the Army “for pulling a gun too much.”
In July, when HGEA filed its lawsuit in Circuit Court, Espero noted in a media report: “The Legislature as a body never actually approved for an airport police department, and basically that’s what is being created.” If that’s the case, state lawmakers should work alongside DOT officials in a needed review and assessment of Securitas’ hiring and training policies. Hawaii’s residents and our visitors — several million annually — deserve to have more assurances about the quality of security at the largest airport in the islands.
