Associated Press
HOUSTON (AP) - The Texas National Guard has been pulled off security details at airports across the nation, but unlike other places, additional police officers haven’t been assigned to replace them at Bush Intercontinental and Hobby airports, officials said.
Houston Airport System officials said they aren’t required by the Transportation Security Act, passed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, to hire more police. Unlike many cities, they said, Houston has a full-time airport police division that fulfills the federal requirements.
“The act requires deployment of law enforcement personnel authorized to carry firearms at each security location, such as baggage-screening checkpoints,” said Greg Warren, spokesman for the federal Transportation Security Administration, formed after the attacks on New York and the Washington, D.C., area.
Warren and Houston Airport System spokesman Ernie DeSoto told the Houston Chronicle for its Tuesday editions that the act does not specify one-for-one replacement of the Guard personnel with police.
“We had airport police on the checkpoints even before 9-11,” DeSoto said. “Private security was running the checkpoints, but (the police officers) were there to make sure there was no problem.”
Before the attacks, he said, “Some airports did not have police forces of their own and did not have officers at the security checkpoints. The Guard was called in especially to aid those people who did not have the law enforcement capability.”
At one time, DeSoto said, about 60 National Guardsmen shared duties in various shifts at Bush, about 35 at Hobby.
“The Guard was great,” he said, “but they had no policing authority. They could hold you until police arrested you.”
After the terrorist attacks, DeSoto said, the airport police - who previously directed traffic and performed other jobs along with providing security - were reassigned to secured locations in the terminals and aircraft handling areas.
Their former, non-security duties are now performed by regular Houston police working overtime, DeSoto said, and some functions - such as checking the trunks of incoming autos - are done by private security personnel, now hired under tougher criminal background checks, he said.
The Houston police unit at Bush has about 450 personnel. Citing security concerns, DeSoto would not say how many police officers, in uniform or plainclothes, do security work at the system’s airports.