Alderman Says Scrap Aviation Cops, Use Chicago Police At Airports Instead

By Stephen Gossett in News on Apr 19, 2017 6:15PM

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A week-and-half removed from the United airlines fiasco that saw Dr. David Dao bloodied and dragged down the aisle at the hand of aviation officers after he refused to be bumped from a fully booked flight at O'Hare International Airport, city officials continue to eye solutions to prevent such turmoil in the future. One Chicago alderman on Wednesday a perhaps unexpected measure: consolidating aviation officers into the Chicago Police Department.

Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th Ward) proposed the streamlining maneuver at a City Council meeting on Wednesday. It's his take that such a consolidation would clear up the uncertainty that lingers as to whether aviation officers were authorized to remove Dao under the circumstances.

Lopez, who once worked as a Midway porter, said, via the Tribune:

"As we heard last week, there's a question of who had the legal authority to board the plane and engage the passenger, whether it was the (aviation officer), or should a Chicago police officer get on the plane to handle the situation. It's my hope that if we have just a single entity at both airports that will clear up any kind of confusion."

That confusion was on display at at an emergency hearing with the City Council aviation committee last Thursday. Jeff Redding, Deputy Commissioner of Security for the Department of Aviation, told a panel that day that aviation security officers are not supposed to board planes in order to handle customer service incidents—but he didn't say whether the United debacle was a customer-service issue or a security one.

It was also still unclear after the hearing why aviation officers sported jackets that read "police" when a January directive was supposed to change it to "security."

Lopez reportedly said that whatever cost hike the city would face—in terms of higher salaries and increased training—would be worth the jump.

Lopez said, according to the Sun-Times:

“There will be an increase in costs, obviously, because we’re talking about different pay scales. But a number of those costs are well within reason [compared to] the possibilities that we are opening ourselves up with when we have two dueling work groups trying to maintain the security of our airports. Whatever the cost is, it would be well worth it-both financially for the city as well as for the delivery of public safety at the airports.”

Of course, there's the issue of guns. Chicago aviation officers don't carry weapons, but Chicago police can. (The mayor recently got in a not-so-subtle dig against the previous push to arm aviation officers.) According to the Tribune, the proposal would allow police stationed at airports to be armed—but the clarification of personnel would presumably ameliorate a conflict. Although the post-DOJ report CPD of course faces its own levels of persistent scrutiny.

Meanwhile, a separate proposal, co-sponsored by Ald. Ed Burke (14th Ward), who almost over-the-top feisty in his questioning of United and Aviation Department personnel last week, calls for banning city workers from boarding planes in order to help airlines remove passengers.