Incident analysis & review

Over the years, we have brought command officers together to tell their stories of an incident to taking an incident and part understanding the after-action review.

One of our incident reviews included an international team of senior command officers at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department (PAPD) shortly after the April 2017 incident at FFL Airport. Two senior Broward County Sherriff officers who were on the seine and oversaw the tragedy at Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FFL) in Broward County, FL, walked through the incident in detail. The incident was examined in detail and contributed to our Community Security Best Practices (CSBP). The incident was the deadliest airport shooting in U.S. history when a passenger killed five people and sent six others to the hospital with injuries. More than 50 others were hospitalized for chest pains, low blood sugar, broken bones, etc., while fleeing the scene and during a subsequent stampede triggered by false reports of another shooting.

We began our quest for best practices after the 9/11 incident in the United States and were cited in the Maritime Transportation Security Act (MTSA - Section 9 (b) (2), and stepped up our concentration after the 2013 Los Angeles International Airport active shooter incident where it took 36 hours to reopen the airport. So many issues arose that had to be addressed. One in particular, our chiefs asked we concentrate on evaluating communication challenges that hampered collaboration with the various law enforcement agencies and offering direction to staff personnel and passengers.

We continue our quest to address threats, evaluate incidents, and maintain best practices for effectively managing operational and crisis requirements. We must ensure the public safety of those who work and travel and ensure the local and global transportation systems are not impeded.

Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport 4/29/17