Critical policy questions that arose in the early hours after the Jan. 6 shooting rampage at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport remained unanswered Tuesday as Broward’s top elected officials huddled with law enforcement and aviation experts.
Among them:
* Should travelers be allowed to check firearms on the planes on which they travel? If so, should they be allowed to pick them up at baggage claim or go through a more secure process to retrieve their weapons?
* Should ammunition be allowed in checked baggage on planes, or should firearm owners be forced to ship it separately or buy it at their destinations?
* Should the secure areas at airports that require identification and screening be expanded? If not, is more money required to station more police in the unsecured areas, such as baggage claim?
* Should the U.S. have a single standard for evaluating the mental health of people who might prove dangerous?
Complete coverage of the Fort Lauderdale airport shooting
U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, whose district includes the airport; Broward Mayor Barbara Sharief, representing her fellow county commissioners; and Broward Sheriff Scott Israel, whose agency provides law enforcement at the county-owned airport, said those were among the subjects discussed at a roundtable at the sheriff’s headquarters.
Media representatives were allowed in briefly to take pictures of the 17 political, law enforcement and aviation leaders around a large conference table. The discussion, which lasted almost two hours, was private. The principals later met with reporters to describe their thinking.
Israel described the session as “very productive. We talked about so many salient issues.”
Wasserman Schultz said she wouldn’t “just start rapid filing legislation” in Washington. Instead, she plans to take “a step-by-step approach. This is not about grandstanding or making knee-jerk decisions.”
Wasserman Schultz said many of her constituents “have expressed great surprise” that people can travel with firearms in checked bags and said it is “a question that needs to be addressed.”
“I really need to understand why we aren’t banning firearms in the belly of an airplane. And ammunition. Ammunition is explosive. That to me is dangerous in and of itself,” she said.
Sharief said the ability of people to check weapons is a subject that warrants “some serious consideration.”
Israel has long been outspoken on the widespread availability of weapons. “I’m for anything that makes it harder or more difficult to have guns in airports, or schools, or anywhere else,” he said.
But, as for continuing to allow checked weapons, Israel said, “That’s a great question. I really haven’t given that part much thought.”
The sheriff suggested that wouldn’t have prevented the shooting that killed five and injured six. “If a person is predisposed to commit mass murder in a cowardly reprehensible fashion, if they can’t do it in an airport, they’re going to find somewhere else to do it,” he said. “If he wasn’t able to get on a plane and come to Fort Lauderdale, I believe he would have done it in Alaska or someplace else.”
Gary Rasicot, chief of operations at the Transportation Security Administration, said the question of checking weapons is not decision for his agency. He said it would be up to Congress to make that call.
The accused shooter, Esteban Santiago, had undergone a mental health evaluation in Alaska, where he was living before traveling to Fort Lauderdale. “Obviously this individual had some very serious challenges. Even though he had been logged into the mental health system, they hadn’t been caught,” Wasserman Schultz said.
Santiago was a National Guardsman who had been deployed to Iraq. Wasserman Schultz said she would be paying special attention to mental health treatment in the Veterans Administration in a new role she has in the new Congress. Last week, she was named top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on military construction, veterans affairs and related agencies.
Among the other issues discussed, Wasserman Schultz said, were problems people faced when they had to flee the terminal, often leaving behind identification and “communications problems that arose.”
Israel said it might be good to have more locations where large groups of people could be bussed after such an incident, as opposed to sending everyone to one place — Port Everglades on the day of the shooting.
Israel said unsecured places, such as baggage claim at the airport, may need to be more protected. “Maybe we need to make these targets a little harder” to attack. He also suggested a change in terminology: “We’ve got to stop using the term active shooter. It’s actually active killer.”
aman@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4550
