AIRPORT SECURITY - What happens to all that stuff?

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Published Sunday, December 9, 2001

Airports' security crackdown raises question for the curious:

What happens to all that stuff? INA PAIVA CORDLE icordle@herald.com

Those scissors that security screeners confiscated from you at Miami International Airport now live in infamy, sterilized, in a Broward landfill. And the gun you tried to slip past the checkpoint at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood has found new life as a manhole cover.

From walking canes with razor-sharp swords hidden inside to fancy gift-boxed sets of imported cheese knives, hundreds of pounds of potential weapons get confiscated by security personnel and dumped in locked trash bins and boxes at South Florida airports each week.

Ever wonder what happens to all that stuff?

From checkpoint to the hereafter, here's the drill:

At Miami International Airport at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, Robert Birdwell, maintenance supervisor for the Miami-Dade Aviation Department, wheels a garbage-pickup gondola past the security checkpoint at each of nine concourse entrances. He -- or another maintenance employee -- goes through this routine every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday morning.

Beyond each checkpoint, he unlocks a chain covering a gray plastic garbage can. Each can is lined with an orange plastic bag and has a four-by-four-inch hole cut into it, for screeners to deposit confiscated items.

At one concourse, screeners found a plain-looking walking cane. Inside the cane, an X-ray machine discovered: a sword. Bye-bye cane.

At another concourse, a passenger had brought through a credit-card-sized piece of plastic -- containing a pull-out knife. At a third checkpoint, screeners had confiscated a Pittsburgh Steelers money clip -- with two folding blades.

COMPLAINTS

It's not unusual for passengers to complain when an item is seized, said Miami-Dade Police Officer Raul Hernandez, especially ``if someone has a knife that has been with them 40 or 50 years or their dad gave it to them before he passed away.''

Frequent traveler Ken Thomas, a Miami banking consultant and Wharton business school lecturer who has flown more than 100,000 miles this year, said security screeners at MIA are the toughest he has encountered. Since September, they have confiscated his Gillette Mach 3 razor, a set of spare blades, a tiny screwdriver for eyeglasses, his fingernail clippers, a can of silicone shoeshine spray and more. Items that pass through easily at other airports have been seized here, leaving him frustrated and angry.

``Everything I've lost, I can replace. The thing I can't replace is my time and the dread of having to go through this.''

At Concourse B, the plastic bag on this day is particularly bulky, filled with contraband silverware, nail files, pocketknives, and scissors of every size and shape, a big Phillips screwdriver and even a full-sized hammer. There's also a brand new box of Williams-Sonoma Italian cheese knives. Birdwell ties the bag in a knot and places it in the gondola, and goes on to the next checkpoint.

All under escort by Hernandez.

About once a month, a screener finds pieces of a gun placed inside a radio, speakers or other items, said Miami-Dade Sgt. Gil Goodman. ``They put them in almost anything to smuggle them to South America,'' he said.

TRANSFER POINT

Once all nine bags are collected, Birdwell wheels the gondola outside and places it into the bed of a pickup truck. Then he drives about 10 minutes -- with a police car following -- to a transfer point west of the airport. It's the same transfer point where all waste from international flights is disposed of, based on strict U.S. Department of Agriculture rules.

There, Birdwell unloads and weighs the bags. Usually, the total is about 160 pounds, but it reached 400 pounds over the Thanksgiving holiday. Tuesday, it was 380 pounds.

``It's amazing to me that after all this time, they still bring as much as they do,'' said Bill Bradley, superintendent of facilities maintenance for the Miami-Dade Aviation Department. Bradley set up the disposal program, piggybacking off the international waste disposal system.

Once the bags are weighed, Birdwell places them inside a large red compactor that holds up to 10 tons of garbage.

BFI, a garbage disposal company contracted by the county, picks up the compactor within two hours and takes it to the Stericycle plant in Northwest Miami-Dade.

Stericycle, a medical waste treatment and disposal company, removes all the confiscated items and places them inside a cylindrical steam sterilizer, eight feet in diameter by 14 feet long, that works much like a pressure cooker, said Stericycle district manager Ron Gettig.

Inside the sterilizer, the items are heated to 280 degrees for about 45 minutes, destroying all the bacteria, Gettig said. Then the items are taken to the Pompano Beach landfill.

The cost to Miami-Dade County, three times a week: 11 cents a pound, which covers BFI's and Stericycle's charges, plus about five work hours, Bradley said. At an estimate of $42 per person per hour, disposing of Tuesday's 380-pound load cost $251.80.

At Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, passengers can voluntarily drop items into 15-by-18-inch ``amnesty boxes,'' which have two-by-six-inch openings on the top, before they pass through each of five security checkpoints.

`AMNESTY BOXES'

Security checkpoint screeners also place the items they confiscate into the boxes or collect them in a tray to later deposit them there, said airport spokesman Jim Reynolds. The Broward Sheriff's Office keeps the keys to the boxes.

Thursday, the airport changed its policy, giving full responsibility for disposal of the boxes' contents to the BSO.

Until then, an airport maintenance worker picked up the contents every Friday evening, after a BSO officer removed any dangerous weapons -- such as firearms. The maintenance worker placed the items in a cardboard box, put the box in a pickup truck, and drove it to an Airport Recycling Specialists garbage bin at the northwest side of the airport, Reynolds said.

BSO is formulating its own plan for disposing of the items, said BSO spokesman Hugh Graf. Friday, some details were still unclear.

Likely, the items -- sans any real weapons -- will be bundled together as ``miscellaneous found items'' and sent to the BSO evidence lock-up, Graf said. They would be held for 90 days, then disposed of as a biohazard, he said.

Confiscated weapons or large knives are also held at BSO's evidence lock-up. If the passenger requests a property receipt, BSO will issue one and hold the item for 90 days, Graf said. BSO will even issue a property receipt for a gun -- after arresting the passenger.

After 90 days, unclaimed guns are taken to a foundry in Miami-Dade, where they are melted down. The end result: manhole covers.



-- Anonymous, December 09, 2001

Answers

And yet Miami International is the worst as far as security, the news says.

hmmm...

-- Anonymous, December 09, 2001


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