Burbank Airport Authority to Form Own Police Force

Burbank Airport security guards, stripped of their firearms and power to make arrests since May, will get them back next month.

To restore its officers to their former standing, the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority voted Monday to form its own police force and hire the same officers who were provided by a private contractor.

Applications will be given to all 24 guards, and those who wish to stay will be hired by the Authority, said Victor J. Gill, community relations manager for the airport.

Any positions remaining open will be filled by the authority, he said.

The new force will take the field Aug. 7, airport officials said.

The authority was required to withdraw police authority from its security guards in May after it was discovered that the agency was not exempt from a state law prohibiting private guards from acting as police officers.

Although the authority is a public agency, it has contracted since 1982 with a private company, Lockheed Air Terminal, to field its security force.

Airport officials thought they had resolved the conflict when the Legislature in 1982 adopted a bill specifically allowing it to hire private law-enforcement agents.

Last year, however, an error in that bill was turned up by an attorney for a security guard who was appealing a disciplinary action.

Without conceding that the bill was invalid, the authority stripped its officers of their policing power aFter the bill’s author, state Sen. Newton Russell (R-Glendale), failed in an attempt to amend it.

In the meantime, four off-duty Burbank police officers were hired to man the airport’s two security checkpoints.