A police officer’s perspective — cops should have never been called to United incident

The debacle with United Airlines and how it handed its passenger being pulled off the plane is more than a public relations nightmare. It is a symptom of corporate arrogance and incompetent leadership. To sum it up, the airlines should have never brought in law enforcement.

When passenger Dr. David Dao refused to vacate his seat so that United could seat a flight crew, it compounded the airline’s lack of negotiating skills.

{mosads}A major flaw in doing so this is that these Aviation Department security officers were assigned a task they should not have been invited into. They found themselves enforcing an airline rule, rather than civil law. Fortunately, United recently released a statement saying that going forward it won’t call the cops anymore,

As distasteful as it is, the airlines hold a virtually stacked deck when it comes to the rights of passengers.

It’s called the terms of carriage, and in essence, it gives the right to the airlines to bounce a passenger for basically any reason.  

In regard to actual removal, however, the pilot and flight crew have significant autonomy; usually they reserve such actions for those who are drunk or creating an issue — in other words, for cause, and that cause is covered by statute thereby giving law enforcement the authority to act.

That was not the case with this incident. By all accounts, Dao had done nothing other than having the misfortune to be picked at random for removal simply because United Airlines needed to send four of its employees to another airport to crew another plane.

United sought volunteers to fly at a later time and offered up to $800 worth of flight tickets; with no passengers taking the offer, the airline used a lottery system to choose the unlucky travelers who were going to be forced to give up their seats.  

Three people agreed when their names were chosen, and a fourth did not. The flight crew and airline apparently had not anticipated a passenger to refuse its authority. Pride inevitably comes before the fall, and a big corporate fail was about to go down.

Instead of regrouping and perhaps choosing to up the reward and ask for another volunteer, the flight crew dug in its heels and threatened to have the police remove Dao. Herein enters part two of misguided judgment, the height of arrogance and weak leadership.

The police were summoned, this we know. The following sequence of events is a bit unclear.  

O’Hare Airport came under the jurisdiction of the Chicago Police Department. Had it been Chicago Police that responded, this situation may have had an entirely different outcome.

However, there is also a Chicago Department of Aviation Security Department. Its officers went through police academy and have arrest powers, but are not armed — and in the event of a life-threatening issue are told to in effect “run and hide.”

In fact, it came to light that the law enforcement officials were not even authorized to have the word “police” on their jackets.   

It was this second group of officers who responded to the United Airlines call to remove Dao. They first attempted to negotiate him off the plane. When he resisted, the officers forcibly removed him, creating the now infamous videotape of Dao being dragged like a sack of potatoes down the aisle and out of the plane.  

The major question from a law enforcement perspective is, of course, were the law enforcement officers justified in using force to remove Dao under these circumstances even at the insistence of the United Airlines flight frew?

As a 34-year Law Enforcement veteran, I knew the answer, but I reached out to several police officers assigned to airports around the country.  

The answers were consistent but were best summed up by one sergeant assigned to a major airport.

“I don’t know the policy of Chicago PD or the State of Illinois, but it was a business dispute. Our procedure seeks to keep the peace, and that’s pretty much it,” the officer said. “The only time I would allow officers to remove someone from an aircraft forcefully is if a crime has been committed. Other than that they paid for the seat and it’s a civil matter.”

“Airlines have been trying to get us to remove passengers all the time for different reasons, and I have to explain to them we are not their bouncers. Our job is to keep the peace. I have been beefed (complained about) by airlines for not removing passengers, but luckily my management has backed me. The question then arises that the airline can claim that the person is trespassing, but that doesn’t hold water because the airline was paid for the seat which still makes it a civil matter.”

The bottom line is that there were no set policies and procedures in place at either United Airlines or the Chicago Aviation Authority for how to properly handle such a situation.

That in and of itself is poor leadership. In the absence of those guidelines, had competent supervision been in place at both airline and law enforcement levels to make rational, intelligent decisions, I doubt the whole ugly situation would have occurred.

Randy Sutton is a retired lieutenant with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. He’s a 33-year law enforcement veteran and the author of four books, including “A Cop’s Life,” and radio talk show host on the America Out Loud Network. Sutton’s seminar “Policing With Honor” has trained thousands of Law Enforcement Officers in surviving a police career ethically as well as physically and emotionally. You can find him on Twitter at: @LtRandySutton.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.