From the gaggle of gabblers at the concert last night, I caught a different take on this:
The Seattle Times: Glaring gap in Sea-Tac security:
When William Maddox pulled into Sea-Tac Airport to drop off his daughter for a flight, he had no idea he was about to expose a hole in airport security.
The cherry farmer was waiting in his truck for a spot at the Southwest Airlines curb. It was a busy Saturday in March. Traffic cops asked him to move. Accounts about what happened next vary wildly. Police say Maddox ignored them, then got hostile. Maddox says he pulled over and cooperated.
In the end, Maddox was pinned and tasered. His daughter says she was beaten with a baton. An officer says he got punched in the face.
Was it a case of unruly passengers? Or thuglike cops?
There was an obvious way to sort it all out. Just look at the tape from the security cameras.
When Maddox’s attorney asked for the tape, what he heard back astonished him.
There was no tape. That’s because there is no camera surveillance of the airport’s arrival or departure drives.
These are the curbside areas of one of the busiest airports in the West. Where 20 million people pass through lugging bags each year.
I couldn’t believe it, either. Last week I wrote how the Auburn SuperMall — which despite its name is a run-of-the-mill oval of outlet stores — had been declared “critical infrastructure” at risk of international-terrorist attack. It scored a digital-camera system at taxpayer expense.
According to one of the dads in the group, the Real Story is that the father was picking up his daughter and her unapproved boyfriend to make sure she came home with dad rather than the boyfriend. The raconteur claims the dad was a little loaded and got into it with the cops as a surrogate for the boyfriend and the daughter ended up in the clutches of the dreaded paramour.
So a lack of reviewable surveillance tape at a busy airport takes a backseat to a bit of soap opera drama. The newspapers of course totally missed the story, in the eyes of some.
All the dads in the group looked like well-compensated professionals — lawyers, software execs, salesmen (one was loud and glib enough for that) — so the fixation on a triviality like that was baffling.
Seriously, why is there no tape running at the curbside? No one has to watch it live but having it to refer back to would be useful, dontcha think?