Behavior screening helps airport officers see suspicious situations
By Michael Grabell / The Dallas Morning News
The future of airport security brings to mind bomb-detecting robots and electronic eye scans – not a handshake and a look in the eye.
But Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport police now are trained to recognize behavior patterns that could indicate a terrorist plot. And security officials and experts say such techniques probably will become commonplace in all airports in the next few years.
With the Behavior Assessment Screening System, D/FW officers patrol the terminals, targeting things that seem out of place, such as passengers without luggage, wearing bulky clothes in the Texas heat or getting anxious at a security checkpoint.
At airports and train stations in the Northeast, the encounters have led police to three people on terrorist watch lists and countless others with drugs and stolen property, said Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Peter DiDomenica, who developed the program.
“Those are just the people we know about,” he said at a security conference in Dallas last week. “Who knows how many times we sent a message to a terrorist that this is a hardened target?”
About half of D/FW Airport’s 150 police officers were trained in September, and the airport plans to send supervisors to Boston to learn more about the program and train the rest of the force.
“It’s just basically an avenue for us to be more aware of the people we have in our terminals and determine if there’s reason for us to visit with them a bit more in depth,” said Alvy Dodson, the airport’s vice president for public safety.
The system was developed two years ago at Boston’s Logan International Airport, where two of the planes hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001, took off.
“If you were looking for these things that morning, you would have seen suspicious things,” Sgt. DiDomenica said. “I definitely think there was a chance.”
The airport’s police have trained about 1,500 airport and mass transit police, federal air marshals, and passenger and baggage screeners. D/FW is one of the first airports outside the Northeast whose officers have been trained.
But civil liberties advocates say they’re concerned the techniques will send a different message.
“It could become a new vehicle for racial profiling or religious profiling with a thin veneer of science over it,” said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union. Mr. Dodson objected to that view.
“We certainly do not condone any type of racial profiling whatsoever, and that is not part of this program,” he said.
Instead, the officers try to use an instinctive alert system to determine if they have an “elevated suspicion” about a person. “Elevated suspicion” comes below the “probable cause” police generally need to detain someone and indicates any clear reason a situation is unusual.
When the officers notice a suspicious person, they try to start a conversation and ask for identification and travel plans. They check for nervous behavior and conflicting stories.
“When you’re under stress, it doesn’t matter if you know you’re being watched,” Sgt. DiDomenica said. “You can’t control it.”
Occasionally, the police refer someone for extra screening at the security checkpoint. In exceptional cases, they could ask the airlines not to fly someone.
Mr. Steinhardt did not believe that the program is harmless. As the human nature of suspects comes out, so will the human nature of the police officers, he said.
“The reality is that in the hands of local police officers or airport security personnel, their biases are going to inevitably come into play,” he said. “We clearly see that on the nation’s streets. It’s no different in the nation’s airports.”
There are other concerns. One woman in the audience of the security conference said she avoids traveling through countries such as Israel that have extra security because of the hassle.
But Sgt. DiDomenica said that being intrusive works against the officers’ goals by distorting the reactions of people when officers approach them.
He touted the program as a missing link in the U.S. security system, noting that metal detectors and baggage X-rays focus on the means of attack rather than looking for signs of intent.
“The worst that happens is that we talked to somebody,” he said. “As long as we’re professional, we’re not rude, what’s the downside?”
Assessing Behavior:
Dallas/Fort Worth Airport Police are now trained to recognize behavior patterns that could indicate a terrorist plot.
Here’s how it works:
Observation:
Police patrol the terminals, scanning crowds for travelers showing signs of fear and stress. They home in on unusual activity, such as people taking notes at checkpoints, buying their tickets at the last minute or wearing clothes that are bulky or have wires attached.
Identification:
Police ask the suspicious person for a driver’s license, passport and boarding pass to check travel patterns.
Interview:
Police try to start a conversation to confirm or dispel their suspicions with open-ended questions about travel plans. They check for people who are lying or evading questions.
Resolution:
Police designate the person as high risk or low risk. If someone is high risk, they can refer that person for extra screening, ask the airlines not to fly them, escort them from the airport or arrest them.