Wednesday, October 18, 2006

If you're going to have increased security at airports...

Wouldn't it make sense to have security all the time?

This story in today's Register should scare us all a bit:

The Des Moines Airport burglar was back this week, but this time he or she didn't get in.

Police said Comair, a Delta connection carrier, reported an attempted break-in on Tuesday. Someone tried to pry open a door to a manager's office, located behind Comair's main counter. It appears that a flat-head screwdriver was used on the door but it held firm.


There have been five burglaries or attempted burglaries at the Des Moines airport in 2006. All are unsolved. Let me see if I can make this one step clearer.

In an era where you can't take a water bottle on a plane for fear you'll make it explode, five people have broken into the place those planes depart from in ten months, and we don't know who they are.

I'm astounded by the fact that in our post 9-11 world, security at our airports is so lax that someone with no technology greater than a flat head screwdriver got into the airport, attempted to break into a room, failed, and escaped while no one noticed.

Does this scare the crap out of anyone else?

KL

3 comments:

Bob said...

There are actually police there 24/7. I have a friend who just got off airport duty a few weeks ago. I think there are usually 3 DMPO there at a time. One of which sits at the curb making sure no one is parking at the loading/unloading area in front of the airport, and one in the security checkpoint area. I'm not sure where the other guy is, if he patrols the airport buildings or not.

It is most likely that the culprit is someone who works there, and would be a matter of employee theft. I don't think we need to be too alarmed about this.

Chelsea said...

No, it doesn't scare me. The morons in charge of our provocative foriegn policy scare me.

If you can't figure out how to break in to a room and steal someone's purse from a filing cabinet, I'm safe.

If you make a law that further alienates the rest of the known world, that puts little freckled me at risk if I want to get on one of those potentially-explosive-laden planes and go somewhere interesting.

Anyhoo, KL, you raise a good point. Let's stage a sit-in. :)

Anonymous said...

No, it doesn't scare me, for a simple reason.

The "post 9-11 politics" is about centralization of government power over the individual. It has nothing to do with our security.

So when things like this happen at airports, it Just Makes Sense and restates something I already knew. No new realization, no new fear.

I hope more and more people come to realize that security rests not in Orwellian double-talk but in freedom and liberty.