Security Gaps Involving Guns Bring Tougher Airport Checks

Stella Harlan shifted from foot to foot as a grim-faced airport security official scoured the contents of her purse Wednesday.

Part of her job as an Orange County secretary is to pick up visiting business executives twice a week at John Wayne Airport. But lately, she has been forced to submit to thorough purse searches every time she walks through security in the gate area.

“I believe it’s good for safety,” she said, “but it does invade my privacy.”

Welcome to Christmas, 1987. After being embarrassed three times in as many weeks with handguns winding up on planes originating from Southland airports, airline security guards are taking no chances now.

They are checking purses, briefcases and luggage with what veteran airline travelers describe as an unprecedented fervor.

Sensitizer Turned Up

They have also turned up the power on walk-through metal detectors so they go off more readily than before. At John Wayne Airport Wednesday, for instance, the detectors sounded on practically every other person who walked through.

The current security awareness can be traced to Dec. 7, when fired USAir employee David A. Burke followed his former boss onto a PSA flight in Los Angeles and went on a shooting rampage that federal officials believe caused the jet to crash near Paso Robles, killing all 43 people aboard.

Security paranoia was heightened further this week when a woman boarded a plane in Ontario with a handgun in her purse and a man boarded a jet in Orange County with a James Bond-like “pen gun” in his possession. The gun resembles a pen and fires a single .22-caliber round.

Ogden Allied Aviation, which provides security for John Wayne and most other major Southland airports, alerted its uniformed screening officials to add pen guns to their list of weapons to watch.

“I know that nobody was thinking about guns in pens yesterday morning,” Jim Wallace, Los Angeles division spokesman for the security company, said Wednesday. “I’m sure people doing this (security checks) are aware today.”

In fact, Wallace said Ogden Allied’s divisional manager rushed down to John Wayne Airport upon hearing of the pen incident Tuesday to immediately alert officials to be on watch for similar weapons.

A pen gun was confiscated from American Airlines passenger Charles Piel Tuesday afternoon after a flight from John Wayne landed at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.

Piel, 26, an unemployed musician from Carlsbad, told investigators that he was en route to Detroit to visit his children and had stopped in Chicago to change planes. Piel was turned in to Chicago police by airline crew members who had reportedly caught him smoking marijuana in a lavatory aboard the plane.

Piel told police that he had not smoked marijuana aboard the plane. But when Chicago Police Officer Michael Prusank asked Piel whether he had any marijuana, Piel handed him seven hand-rolled marijuana cigarettes, which resulted in his immediate arrest. During a search, Prusank said he found 60 more grams of marijuana in Piel’s carry-on bag--plus the pen gun in his right rear pocket.

Piel told police he had “no answer” when asked what he was doing with the gun, Prusank said. Piel was charged with felony possession of marijuana and unlawful use of a weapon, Chicago police said.

Boarded in Ontario

In the other security breach that came to light this week, a Lake Elsinore woman was arrested Monday when a loaded handgun was found in her carry-on bag as she prepared to board a plane at San Francisco International Airport.

The woman, Ruth Persley, 59, a university administrative assistant, said she unknowingly carried the pistol through security Monday morning at Ontario International Airport. The gun was detected on her return flight from a business meeting.

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials said they are investigating both incidents.

Effective last Monday, the FAA began forcing airline employees to go through security checks along with passengers, to prevent another deranged worker from boarding a plane with a gun.

Everyone boarding a jetliner now is required to walk through the magnetic field of a metal detector, monitored by a security official. Carry-on luggage is also placed on a conveyor belt that runs through an X-ray machine, where another security official can look for a gun, knife or other weapon.

Security officials have confiscated many guns and knives in this screening process, Wallace said, as well as exotic weapons such as hand grenades. Wallace said that in almost all these cases, the holder of the weapon told security officials afterward that he was not aware it was unlawful to carry weapons aboard--even though signs are clearly posted.

At John Wayne Airport, there are six walk-through metal detectors at the entrances to the airport’s four boarding gates. Officials at the airport said the security staff has been significantly increased since the PSA crash, with up to five guards monitoring each screening area. Two and three were the norm before.

“We’re still the same--good as always,” Phyllis Bennion, security manager at the airport, said during a slow moment Wednesday.

The security system may be good, but there is room for improvement, airline officials agreed Wednesday after reviewing the latest two gun incidents.

“When things like that bypass security, everybody in the industry is concerned, as well as the traveling public,” said Daniel Richardson, director of America West Airlines operations at John Wayne.

Richardson said one flaw in the screening system is a built-in unreliability of metal detectors. He said the metal detectors may or may not pick up metal on someone’s body, as their reliability is influenced by such factors as the magnetic field around a person’s body and the static electricity in the air. He said some detectors also scan the body but not the feet, failing to detect weapons hidden in shoes.

“Some people can pass through with a lot of metal and others with little,” Richardson said.

Metal detectors at John Wayne Airport should have detected the pen gun found on Piel because it contains a small amount of metal, Richardson said.

Weaknesses in airport security were also revealed in a recent congressional investigation. Investigators from the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found that one out of five weapons and explosives they tried to smuggle onto flights went undetected in tests at security checkpoints in major airports, and that at some airports investigators wandered virtually at will in restricted areas without being challenged.

As a result of the disclosures, the FAA announced Wednesday that it plans next year to deploy special teams of inspectors to test security at 16 major airports. Los Angeles International was identified by the Associated Press as one airport that would be placed under surveillance.

Amid the security crackdown, the holiday travel rush continued unabated at John Wayne. Representatives of the nine airlines that operate flights out of Orange County all reported business as usual, with no unusual delays at security checkpoints.

“I’ve been here for four Christmases, and it doesn’t seem any worse,” said Larry Pool, airport station chief for Delta Airlines.

Few passengers were complaining.

Norbert Neumann, a computer executive from West Germany who flies 80,000 miles a year worldwide, had his two articles of luggage and a briefcase hand-searched by a security official Wednesday as he prepared to board a flight back home.

Neumann said the tougher security measures are still nothing in contrast with the rigorous security in place at European airports, where there are machine gun-toting guards and airline passengers are subjected to not only searches but also a grueling line of questioning.

“I appreciate that,” Neumann said with a smile afterward. “I want to be protected. There is nothing as important as my life.”

Times staff writer Bob Schwartz contributed to this report.