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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
Photo by C.M. Guerrero/Miami Herald/WpN
Passengers on American Airlines flight 924 arriving from Medellín, Colombia, exit the plane with their hands above their heads at Miami International Airport on Dec. 7, 2005. (Inset: Rigoberto Alpizar)
The shooting of Rigoberto Alpizar wasn't just a horrible mistake. It was also a major setback for sane airport security.
Dec 9, 2005 | On Wednesday afternoon at Miami International Airport, two sky marshals shot and killed an apparently unarmed and mentally unstable passenger. The dead man was 44-year-old Rigoberto Alpizar, a U.S. citizen living in Florida. He and his wife had arrived earlier in the day on a flight from Quito, Ecuador, after a working holiday as church missionaries.
According to reports, shortly after the couple had taken their seats in the American Airlines Boeing 757, Alpizar began acting erratically: jumping up, shouting and claiming to have a bomb. He was shot after running up the aisle toward the cockpit, collapsing into the jetway after ignoring orders to get down, and reaching into a bag for what the marshals took to be a weapon or explosive device. As many as six rounds may have been fired.
Were the marshals justified in shooting? For now that's an impossible question to answer from afar, but already there is controversy brewing. At least one passenger has stepped forward to say that Alpizar did not, in fact, make any mention of a bomb. Other witnesses claim that as he dashed up the aisle, his wife attempted to intervene, explaining that her husband suffered from a bipolar disorder and had neglected to take his medication. "My husband! My husband!" she shouted. Earlier allegations that the wife spoke only in Spanish -- and that agents, guns drawn, were unable to understand -- are now being discounted. One of the agents, a former U.S. Customs inspector, is said to be fluent in Spanish.
The aircraft, bound from Miami to Orlando as part of a connecting service from Medellín, Colombia, was docked at the gate. It would seem rather improbable that a terrorist would go running up the aisle of a yet-to-depart jetliner announcing he had a bomb, then dash into the jetway. Then again, the air crime annals are full of strange occurrences, and from a sky marshal's perspective, the psychological state of a would-be saboteur is not open for slow and careful analysis in a situation that calls for instant decision making. Rigoberto Alpizar, many will contend, regardless of his intentions or state of mind, had it coming.
In the days ahead, you can expect sharp debate on whether the killing was justified, and whether the nation's several thousand air marshals -- their exact number is a tightly guarded secret -- undergo sufficient training. How are they taught to deal with mentally ill individuals who might be unpredictable and unstable, but not necessarily dangerous? Are the rules of engagement overly aggressive?
Those are fair questions, but not the most important ones.
Wednesday's incident fulfills what many of us predicted ever since the Federal Air Marshals Service was widely expanded following the 2001 terror attacks in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington: The first person killed by a sky marshal, whether through accident or misunderstanding, would not be a terrorist. In a lot of ways, Alpizar is the latest casualty of Sept. 11. He is not the victim of a trigger-happy federal marshal but of our own, now fully metastasized security mania.
Although Alpizar had lived in the United States for two decades, he was born in Costa Rica. Speaking on Alpizar's behalf, Costa Rican President Abel Pacheco said he would push for an inquiry, taking the opportunity to indict the American mindset. "It was a painful event," Pacheco told a radio interviewer. "But you have to understand the level of paranoia under which the Americans live regarding terrorism."
The Costa Rican president's involvement, which clearly involves a degree of busybody politicking, is reminiscent of Brazil's response after one of its citizens, Jean Charles de Menezes, was mistaken for a terrorist and killed by police in Britain on July 22. London was on high alert after bus and subway bombings earlier that month killed more than 50 commuters. (In a coincidence both eerie and symbolic, one can't help noticing a strong physical resemblance between de Menezes and Alpizar.)
In the moments that followed the shooting, the remaining 113 passengers on flight 924 were paraded onto the tarmac, hands on their heads, and taken away for questioning. The entire terminal was shut down. The FBI spoke of potential terrorist plots and were "looking to see if there's a nexus." Security was beefed up in terminals nationwide. Here at my hometown airport, Boston's Logan, state police reinforcements were called in, some toting assault weapons. Speaking in the Boston Globe, an airport spokeswoman described that response as "prudent."
In other words, the tragedy in Miami is apt to result in yet another round of heightened security at airports all over the nation. With the Christmas travel rush looming, the timing couldn't be worse, and rest assured some officials and politicians will be using Wednesday's shooting as fodder to rail against the planned relaxation of carry-on rules.
