Training at Issue for Airport Police

City officials questioned the qualifications of Burbank Airport police Wednesday following an incident in which an airport police officer fired four shots at a fleeing car.

Burbank Police Chief David P. Newsham said he is withholding judgment on whether the officer acted properly by firing his gun in front of a busy airport terminal in mid-afternoon. Newsham said the incident highlights the issue of training for airport police.

“This has long been a concern of ours,” he said.

But airport officials--while acknowledging that the incident was unusual--said airport officers receive enough training for their jobs. Airport officers are trained to meet minimum state requirements, and get about one-tenth the training that municipal police receive.

More highly trained officers would be both expensive and “underutilized,” given the more limited duties their jobs require, said airport spokesman Victor Gill.

The officer said he was attempting to shoot out the tires of the vehicle.

One city official said bystanders may have been endangered by bullets flying in the midst of the busy airport. The airport serves 5 million passengers a year, and shortly after Tuesday’s incident, the terminal swarmed with people and the parking garage was packed.

“People could have died,” said Bud Ovrom, Burbank city manager. “If that was one of our officers, we would be very, very upset.”

No one was reported injured in the incident. The officer, Thomas Dangelo, a 19-year veteran of the airport police force, was placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation, said Burbank police and airport officials.

According to a more detailed account of the incident released Wednesday by the airport and Burbank police, Dangelo was contacted by an agent of the Alamo car rental agency in the terminal just before 2 p.m. Tuesday.

The agent told him that a man at the rental car counter may have been involved in a luggage theft. The agency apparently had been tracking the man, and when he arrived to return a car, its computer flagged him as a potential suspect, Gill said.

Dangelo tried to detain him. But the man, described as about 30 years old with dark, wavy hair, and wearing a polo shirt, ran toward a car with a waiting driver parked at the curb outside the terminal.

Dangelo ordered him to stop, then grabbed and grappled with him.

The man broke free and bolted to the car, described as a light-blue Honda. Dangelo drew his weapon, and as the car drove away with the man still hanging partly out, Dangelo fired. Later, he told investigators that he was trying to hit the tires.

Burbank police, in a search for the car, checked several locations and eventually found two recently rented Alamo cars at 160 S. Virgil Ave. in Los Angeles, where they seized false passports and arrested two women. One of the women was wanted on an outstanding burglary warrant; both were booked on suspicion of forgery and giving false information, police said.

Still in pursuit of the men involved in the incident at the airport, they also served a search warrant at 615 S. Rampart Blvd. in Los Angeles and seized several handguns and items described as “commonly stolen during luggage thefts.” But the theft suspects remained at large, police said.

Burbank Airport lies partly within the borders of the city of Burbank, but it has a separate 19-member police force. Airport police have an agreement with Burbank Police, who are called to respond to crimes that lie outside the specialized field of airport security in which the airport police are trained.

Airport police receive the same training as other transit, railroad and port police officers throughout the state, with some additional training specific to airport security issues and Federal Aviation Administration rules, said Gill, the airport spokesman.

The minimum training standards for such officers are considerably lower than those for municipal police. They receive 64 hours of arrest and firearm training and 24 hours of airport security training. Regular patrol officers must get at least 664 hours of academy training, said Mickey Bennett, chief consultant for the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training.

Many police officers receive more training: Burbank, for example, requires its officers to spend between 768 and 858 hours in the academy, said Newsham, while Los Angeles police officers spend 1,064 hours, Bennett said. Transit and airport police in the state commonly carry weapons, and at Burbank Airport, they get refresher courses regularly on handling firearms.

But the existence of what Ovrom calls “limited police” within the city’s borders has been one of many sticking points between the city and the airport authority. The two have chilly relations generally, and are bitterly opposed on a number of issues related to the airport’s planned expansion.