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Friday August 11, 2006

Miami International Airport has a SWAT team; they just said so on the Early Show. What’s interesting is that MIA’s web site says nothing about it. The best I could do is this—some reports about the guy shot by Air Marshalls mentioned it.

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  1. Tere    Fri Aug 11, 11:08 AM #  

    That info wouldn’t be in MIA’s website. Miami-Dade police has a unit stationed at MIA – the team is theirs. And Air Marshalls are federal. All are separate entities, even though airport officials, MDPD and various federal agencies all work together.



  2. NicFitKid    Fri Aug 11, 12:31 PM #  

    Well, I’m not sure exactly what their organizational chart is, but on the Miami-Dade website, there’s mention of a Special Patrol Bureau that includes an SRT that handles ‘hijackings’ and ‘major aircraft disasters’, as well as an Aviation Unit whose responsibilities include ‘support of perimeter operations’ and ‘investigative surveillances.’

    There’s also an Airport District Station , but based on their boundary map I’m not sure if they just cover the geographical area around MIA. There’s no mention of any specific function or units, just the station’s boundaries.

    I hate the Miami-Dade website, by the way, it’s not easy to find what you’re looking for, and by the time you’re done clicking through different links the browser ends up with five or six open windows.



  3. mkh    Fri Aug 11, 03:14 PM #  

    Nic, you should sign up for the M-D portal review list. Every week they send out an e-mail of changes and additions to the site, and actively (and honestly) solicit feedback.

    The new windows are bugging me a little, too, but I suspect that’s a kludge around the CMS software they use.



  4. Tere    Fri Aug 11, 03:17 PM #  

    The Airport District Station covers just MIA. They handle any incident that occurs on airport property. Since 9/11, there’s been more involvement and control by the federal government, but MDPD works with them (if I recall correctly, MDPD officers stationed at MIA have received training from federal agents). They’ve got K-9 officers, and they’re usually the ones at work when there’s a suspicious package or bomb threat.

    MIA also has it’s own fire station, btw. There’s a station in the middle of the field and one on the north end. Whenever a plane’s coming in with some kind of problem, those are the rescue officers who wait for them on the tarmac.



  5. alesh    Fri Aug 11, 03:54 PM #  

    mkh~

    The Miami 21 is one of the worst sites I’ve ever had to use. the M-D site is not as bad as that, but opening new windows is inexcusable.

    My favorite is the City of Miami site, which lulled me into a false sense of security with it’s attractive and modern layout, then launched a new window with a supressed status bar, which window then launched and unwarned PDF, crashing my computer (as pdfs often do). I have firefox set up to warn me when I’m about to click a PDF, and they deliberatly disabled that feature.

    Mind you, this to access PUBLIC INFORMATION, which is what makes it sort of unforgivable (sort of like when the feds required windows and Internet Explorer 6.0 to apply for FEMA aid).

    Tere~

    As far as the specifics of the interaction between MDPD and the airport, I don’t have a particular problem with how they’re setting it up, or even if they want to keep it top secret. I just thought it was interesting that a combined google search for “miami international airport” and “swat team” didn’t return anything about it.