Keeping a Close Eye on Airport

They are almost everywhere, watching your every move.

Pass through the bustle of Los Angeles International Airport and expect to have your picture photographed by one of 184 cameras posted throughout the vast network that makes up the country’s second-busiest airport.

Go to the long-term parking lots. The cameras are there. Put your luggage through an X-ray scanner. Again, they are there. Just about everywhere but the bathrooms, they are there.

The cameras, which are linked to videotape recorders in a telecommunications building, are part of a $6.2-million security system that has helped decrease crime at the airport by 24% after its first year, said airport spokeswoman Cora Fossett.

Car break-ins are way down. Con artists are finding it more challenging to get way with scams.

“It’s fun putting these guys in jail,” said Sgt. Ken Bowers, the airport police officer in charge of communications. “We didn’t think the crime-solving aspect would be so big.”

After spending a year installing the cameras, airport officials quickly turned on the high-security system in June 1995 just as the Unabomber was threatening to blow up an airliner flying out of the airport. But the cameras not only monitor passengers and possible bomb couriers. They have become an important tool for stitching together crime clues.

So far, the biggest mystery solved by the cameras was the grisly murder of Stacey Janelle Horst, whose charred body was found April 15 in a burned car inside a parking structure. Her 8-month-old fetus was lying nearby, still attached to her by an umbilical cord.

The 29-year-old woman’s identity remained a mystery for a week.

For three weeks, airport police officers scrutinized a videotape recorded by the airport cameras that showed the comings and goings of everyone in the parking lot across from Terminal 1. Finally, they discovered a shred of evidence, a picture of a man entering the parking lot that led homicide detectives to question Horst’s former lover, Lance Cpl. Jonathan Davis.

Davis had been named in a paternity suit filed by Horst. Weeks after the questioning, he committed suicide in Northern California.

“Going through videotape frame by frame can be a tedious business, but the rewards are great,” Bowers said.

Another mystery solved by the cameras was the perplexing disappearance of a woman’s purse that was seemingly swallowed up by an X-ray scanner as the owner passed through a metal detector.

After the woman reported it missing, an airport police officer looked at a videotape from two cameras focused on the X-ray machine. The pictures showed the woman setting her purse on the conveyor belt, just as she said.

But the cameras also revealed something else. Standing behind the woman was a man who placed his open garment bag on the conveyor belt right behind her purse.

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Further scrutiny showed him reaching into the scanner, placing her purse inside his bag and zipping it up. The man has not been arrested, but airport police have his description and if they catch him, they will use the videotape in court to prove their case.

The airport has 40 to 45 cameras located in long-term parking lots B and C where their visible presence apparently has contributed to a sharp drop in the number of break-ins.

The bulk of the cameras are located in the main terminals, where many are focused on the X-ray scanners that every passenger must walk through before entering the terminals’ long passageways to the departure gates.

All the cameras feed into the dispatch room of airport police headquarters and are recorded by 47 VCRs that run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Once a videotape is recorded, it is placed in the security system library and saved for up to 15 months. Every day, the airport spends $300 on videotapes, Bowers said.

“It has done everything we asked for and more,” said airport Police Capt. Alan Hyde, noting that the airport wants to add more cameras to its system.

The cameras also have cut down on the time airport police officers spend in court. Recently employees X-raying some carry-on luggage noticed a bag with a large amount of marijuana inside. When they asked to inspect the bag, the person who owned the bag walked away.

Cameras recorded the entire event. Police were able to glance at the videotape, identify the woman, who was wearing a distinctive pink suit, and arrest her.

At her trial, the woman pleaded not guilty, saying the bag did not belong to her. But once the prosecution produced pictures showing her placing the bag on the conveyor belt to the X-ray machines, she pleaded guilty.

Instead of spending two or three days in court, police officers were back on the job in a few hours.