On the Road: Gun Smuggling on Airplane Reveals Safety Oversight

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Credit history Boyoun Kim

On the Street

By JOE SHARKEY

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CRITICS who have extended complained that airport security actions are mainly “security theater” have provided a recent aviation gun-smuggling drama very poor critiques.

The authorities say that on Dec. ten, whilst 1.seven million other passengers had been getting routinely screened for weapons at stability checkpoints in airports close to the region, a gentleman carrying a backpack containing 16 firearms with ammunition flew aboard a Delta Air Lines passenger jet to Kennedy Global Airport in New York from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Global Airport. The suspect was arrested in New York that working day following a monthslong investigation into gun smuggling to New York from Atlanta.

“What we have in this circumstance is an egregious breach of security down in that airport” in Atlanta, the Brooklyn district lawyer, Kenneth P. Thompson, mentioned at a news convention final week to announce substantial expenses. At the middle of the circumstance is a former Delta Air Traces employee charged with smuggling 153 firearms, including an AK-forty seven assault weapon, on seventeen Delta flights in between Atlanta and New York from May possibly eight to Dec. ten.

Soon after passing by way of the regular airport security checkpoints, the suspect acquired the guns from an accomplice, a Delta baggage handler who had straightforward entry to safe areas of the airport and was ready to carry firearms into the terminal, Mr. Thompson mentioned.

“My jaw dropped on this one particular,” mentioned Anthony C. Roman, a safety specialist. “It strips away the protection facade that’s been in area given that 2002 and painfully exposes the main deficiencies that numerous safety pros have been attempting to carry to the forefront considering that 9/eleven,” he stated. He and other folks have been worried that personnel with obtain to secure airport regions are not as intently screened as travellers are at the checkpoints.

Mr. Thompson explained that on Dec. ten, the previous Delta worker, Mark Q. Henry, forty five, of Brooklyn, acquired several guns at the Atlanta airport from a Delta Air Strains baggage handler, Eugene Harvey, 31, of College Park, Ga. He said that Mr. Harvey took the guns to the safe location of the terminal and transferred them to Mr. Henry in a prearranged meeting in a men’s room. Simply because Mr. Henry experienced presently handed by way of the Transportation Safety Administration passenger checkpoint, he was ready to stash the guns in his backpack and have them on to Delta Flight 2352 that morning, the district attorney stated.

The authorities arrested Mr. Henry and seized the guns right after he arrived in New York. He, Mr. Harvey and three folks who are accused of getting accomplices experience numerous costs. Attorneys for Mr. Henry and for Mr. Harvey could not be arrived at for comment.

Mr. Thompson had harsh words and phrases for the breakdown in airport terminal protection. “The dilemma with that airport in Atlanta is that the staff don’t have to go by means of screening” that would make certain that firearms are not introduced into protected places, he explained.

But there is a subplot. In a long investigation, New York detectives initially assumed that the guns bought in Ga had been arriving in Brooklyn the usual way. “We believed they had been undertaking the Iron Pipeline, driving I-95,” mentioned Lupe Todd, a spokeswoman for the Brooklyn district attorney’s place of work.

Following all, no a single assumes that smugglers are bold sufficient to have guns via an airport, on numerous situations, instead than transportation them north by car or truck. “Were they really silly, or have been they silly-wise enough to determine out there was a loophole at the airport and use it to their advantage” and make certain speedy supply? Ms. Todd requested.

The authorities experienced the suspect below surveillance for several months. Delta, informed of the investigation, notified law enforcement in New York whenever Mr. Henry was traveling on a Delta flight, Ms. Todd explained. But detectives assumed that the suspect was traveling among Atlanta and New York only after arranging the purchases in Ga, even though the guns were getting driven north.

Clear concerns arise. Mr. Thompson explained “a lengthy-expression investigation” by his workplace and the New York Law enforcement Section in the course of which Mr. Henry took seventeen flights “with guns on him” more than seven months. So when did the authorities suspect that the guns had been currently being transported on Delta flights? And to what extent ended up the Transportation Stability Administration and Delta Air Strains mindful of this?

“Once he remaining the airport, as component of our investigation, we started to follow him because we realized he was on that flight,” Mr. Thompson stated at the news conference.

Following the arrest was made this thirty day period, prosecutors in the district attorney’s business office and New York law enforcement detectives laboriously reviewed several hours of airport surveillance movie in Atlanta and recognized segments exhibiting Mr. Henry carrying his backpack onto the Delta flight, Ms. Todd explained. Then the penny dropped. “It was bugging them that these guns were receiving onto the streets so rapidly. Then, lo and behold, it was like, ‘Oh my God, they’re carrying them on planes they’re not driving them,’ ” she mentioned.

“This workplace had completely no understanding that guns had been being transported by airplane right up until the Dec. 10 arrest,” she extra.

Representatives for Delta and the Atlanta airport declined to discuss the details of the investigation with me. A spokesman for the T.S.A., David Castelveter, verified that the agency “has been part of the investigation,” but declined to elaborate. “T.S.A. requires the potential for insider threats at airports very seriously,” and continuously does risk assessments and airport criminal checks for all airline personnel, Mr. Castelveter stated.

A statement by Delta stated, “Delta is cooperating with authorities in this investigation. We take severely any activity that fails to uphold our strict determination to the protection and security of our buyers and personnel.”

Reese McCranie, a spokesman for the Atlanta airport, said that the airport experienced “cooperated completely with the F.B.I., the T.S.A. and other agencies during the course of this investigation.” He stated that airport employees had to move criminal track record checks and had been subject to “continuous vetting and random inspections.” He added, “In light-weight of these current events, we are examining our safety prepare and will make the suitable alterations to avert future incidents of this mother nature.”

In this case, the motive appears to be smuggling guns from Georgia for illegal resale in Brooklyn. No connections to terrorism are evident. Nevertheless, as Mr. Thompson mentioned, “this scheme really exposes a threat in terms of terrorism” by showing how porous airport security can be. Suspects “repeatedly evaded airport safety with luggage of firearms” on at minimum five instances just this year, stated Sally Quillian Yates, the United States lawyer in Atlanta.

Mr. Roman, the stability consultant, agreed about the potential menace underscored by this case. “To be capable to place 153 weapons, like fight weapons, onto a passenger airline on recurring flights is the highest safety breach that you can endure,” he explained.

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A edition of this write-up seems in print on December thirty, 2014, on website page B4 of the New York version with the headline: Gun Smuggling on Aircraft Reveals Safety Oversight .

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