Airport Shooting Report Criticizes Comms

There was no delay in communications or response to a fatal shooting at the Los Angeles World Airport last November, but a new city analysis of the incident is critical of incident management, radio interoperability and public alerting. The 82-page report delves deeply into planning, coordination and training, but also reveals smaller technical details about 911 and radio that hindered the best possible response. The incident occurred on Nov. 12, 2013 when a man entered Terminal 3 and fatally shot a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officer at a passenger security checkpoint. He then moved through the airport firing his weapon until airport police officers engaged and shot him within four minutes. Despite being resolved quickly, the incident necessarily touched off a huge evacuation of the airport, a massive emergency response, and operations to insure the airport was safe from other suspects. Even though the incident occurred at one of the country’s busiest airports, its lessons are applicable to any size of agency.

Red Phone

The first call for help was made immediately from a TSA check-point “Red Phone.” The caller immediately evacuated, leaving the phone off the hook. However, the phone system is direct-dial and has no caller ID, so the handling dispatcher did not know from where the call originated. A cellular call from an airport employee was received within seconds, and the information was immediately broadcast to officers.

The report noted that 911 calls from wired telephones at the airport are routed to the city’s main LAPD comm center, and cellular calls are routed to the California Highway Patrol (CHP). The airport’s 7-digit emergency number is displayed on placards at various points in the terminals, but is generally not recognized by the thousands of passengers who transit the terminals.

After the incident, tests of the Red Phone system discovered that several were not working, and several panic alarms also were inoperative. An audit of emergency notification lists revealed that some entries were out of date and group lists were inaccurate—the appropriate people had not been notified.

The report recommended that alerting technologies and protocols should be improved, that administration of notifications should be centralized in one unit, and that techniques be implemented to allow quick up-staffing of the comm center to handle sudden emergencies.

Radio

The report quickly summed up its findings on radio communications during the incident. “Incompatibility of radio systems is one of the most common problems facing first responder agencies.”

In this case, 20 different agencies responded to the incident, mostly with different radio systems. This lack of communications led to the delayed implementation of unified command for post-event activities, and to a lack of situational awareness when commanders finally did take overall control of the incident.

Interestingly, the airport police do have LAPD channels programmed into their radios. “However, LAWAPD leadership has expressed concerns about having to switch frequencies in a fast moving event,” the report stated.

The report recommended that the city’s police, fire and other public safety partners expand their efforts to provide interoperability through the Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System (LA-RICS). It also recommended acquiring a communications van, and integrating communications better into the airport’s overall emergency plan.

Notifications

The report was also critical of the mass notification systems used at the airport, in this case to address the thousands of passengers departing airplanes or waiting for a take-off. In this case, about 4,500 people were evacuated from Terminal 3, and another 20,000 sheltered in place or were on airplanes on the tarmac.

The airport comm center had both data and voice systems to make notifications, including the airport’s official Twitter account. But the voice alerting system at the airport has no central control, and airport officials were not aware that they could have accessed the Wireless Emergency Alert system to reach passengers at the airport who had cellular phones.

The report recommended that officials inventory and centralize all the airport’s voice public address systems, and that public information become a higher priority during early stages of an incident. The existing position of public information officer should be supplanted during large emergencies to insure the public is well informed.

Download (pdf) the full report for more details.