Airport Policing
Training Issues and Options
By ROBERT T. RAFFEL

Airports are expanding and growing to unprecedented levels due to more afford- Aable airfares and increasing public acceptance of air travel. In fact, some airports have become small cities, complete with banks, hotels, gas stations, and car rental agencies. 1 Today, most major airports boast several banks, scores of businesses, millions of passengers, and a commensurate rise in criminal activities, some of which are common in airports or specific to them (e.g., airline ticket fraud, narcotic smuggling, and distraction theft).

TRAINING ISSUES

Against this background, law enforcement officers seldom receive training on how to operate in the airport environment.2 Police assigned to an airport have basic training skills, tuned almost exclusively to urban and rural environments. Agencies place little effort on training officers in the investigation of airport-specific crimes or in tailoring enforcement plans to meet the growing demands that airports present today. Existing training usually concentrates on specific tasks or legal areas. For example, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), historically has provided training for airport police officers. The course, appropriately enough, concentrates almost exclusively on regulatory areas of great interest to FAA, but comprises only part of what airport police officers need to know to effectively complete their duties. Airports around the nation also train police on a local level, sometimes with the active assistance and participation of FAA Civil Aviation Security Offices. These efforts, while commendable, lose the consistency that a more centrally managed approach might obtain. Additionally, local training efforts miss an opportunity to avail themselves of a best-practices model, where the hard-learned