shoot fired on plane in miami

xpost

Sounds like he actually shot the passenger.

:-(

This story pisses me off and I didn't even lose luggage. It's sad and miserable.

* I don't know how much control she had over him.

Considering the way airlines handle lost/damaged luggage complaints, I'd guess the answer is "very unsatisfactorily".

I know bi-polar people who, even unmedicated, would not ever behave like that. Which is only to say, any "guarantee" of such an incident is tied to the specifics of the patient.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-12-07-air-marshals_x.htm

At least it didn't seem like there was any problem in this area.

I haven't heard this anywhere else. I have been waiting for it, though. However, I bit my tongue yesterday, rather than to go on about "was he wearing a padded coat? did he jump the jetway turnstile? did he emerge from a suspected den of terrorists?"

I keep thinking about the scenario as represented in the media, and piecing together what I've heard about the marshall program, which is that they are drilled in specific procedures, and it apparently is hoped that response becomes so "instinctive" that no thought is necessary in the procedure's execution. I don't know if that's even POSSIBLE, but assuming it is, and also assuming that whatever "trigger markers", like an explicit bomb threat, were present, the marshall did the correct thing w/r/t to procedure.

But I also keep trying to envision this scenario as it played out (which is ridiculous, given my dearth of actual information), wondering if the guy was really a credible threat as a bomber or otherwise. And, whether the credibility should matter for the purposes of the marshall. And, if there is a way to make it matter, and still protect people adequately. I've seen some commentary lamenting the existence of an intermediate step, like tasers. Would a taser on a plane be effective if all a guy has to do is press a button? I know they sometimes kill, but I've read that they sometimes don't disable.

using a taser makes a lot more sense than a handgun, which could puncture the fuselage and depressurize the plane.

All in all: this story sucks. My suspicions are leaning towards suicide-by-cop, but who really knows? The truth will out, one hopes.

uh, hrm, yeah, it's hard to believe that a fictional show would make something up, uh huh.

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As a friend of mine said: "shoot to kill only works until the terrorists figure out how to hook-up heart rate monitors to their bombs."
Ha, if their HRMs are as reliable as mine, this would be great. Terrorists would never make it down their own block.

Now I know the sequel to Speed 2, the bomb is hidden inside the downtube of the preznit's mtn bike. If his heart rate drops below 160, kaboom! Keep riding tempo sir, your life depends on it!

a) this risk is relatively low, b) depressurizing the plane by itself in that manner wouldn't be a disaster in the making unless the air masks didn't drop and the plane was unmanuverable, c) tasers don't have near the performance of a handgun in terms of flexibility of assault, and d) tasers kill people.

I just keep wondering why they didn't just shoot an arm or in the nuts or someplace other than the vitals. Can't they just wing him and then let the "Let it roll!" citizen brigade beat him senseless handcuff him?

I can't really think of why a bomber would identify himself.

(this is getting morbid)

"Witnesses differ over hearing bomb threat

Accounts vary on whether Alpizar had announced he had a bomb.

Tirpak said he didn't hear Alpizar say anything.

Dave Adams, a spokesman for the Federal Air Marshal Service, said Alpizar had run up and down the plane's aisle yelling, "I have a bomb in my bag."

But, none of the passengers they've talked to have said that; they did say that they heard the wife repeatedly saying he was bi-polar.

Still it sounds like a weird situation. It seems to have been escalated by a phone call the wife received? i wonder what that was about.

OMG

Spink, if this guy just bolted upright, NEVER mentioned a bomb, ran up and down the aisles like a loon before bolting out the door to the jetway, is that a credible threat to the plane justifying the use of deadly force?

I think that's worth discussing.

What if he did say "bomb"? I think the justification just got pretty damn easy, but it's STILL worth discussing to some people. Sorry to offend your sense of order.

Unlike...guns?

Having hindsight and then scrutinizing anything is fucking crazy in my mind. Manic people are typically told not to fly by their physicians and are certainly not supposed to just skip medication. The whole situation at face value went as it should have - he freaked out and posed a threat and got shot down. Afterwards they found out he was indeed crazy, and thats sucks...but oh fucking well. Lesson learned.

Im sick of people being so sensitive about this crap. Its things like this that make people to hesitate to assist people in insane car crashes in fear of being sued later regardless of their good intentions. These guys did their job with a fucked up situation and now they are going to be questioned? Fuck that.

Thats what Im saying. Hindsight nit-picking is insulting.

Didn't the Pennsylvania plane hijackers threaten to bomb the plane if it wasn't diverted to crash into the White House/the Capitol/Camp David/Air Force One or whatever the intended target. No marshal to pop a cap in him = next best option is buying some time to try and overthrow the dude rather than letting him detonate his bomb.

(xxxxpost)

That said, I think it would indeed be unusual for a credible organized plane-bomber to run up and down the aisles yelling about his bomb. Which, judging by passenger reports, this person may not even have done. The inconsistency is kind of bothersome. I think most Americans understand the better-safe-than-sorry mentality we're working with here. I'd rather the official entities involved just admitted that this mentality wound up tragic this time, in some spin-free manner that maintains our trust. Maybe this isn't spin -- maybe the air marshal really was the only one who heard the bit about the bomb -- but the appearance of inconsistency (and the suspicions of ass-covering it inevitably leads to) just diminish good faith in the whole thing. We all know they're working on a low-tolerance shoot-to-kill safety-first philosophy; most people want them to do that; when it makes for a tragedy, just admit it, because we all understand how that mentality is almost bound to result in at least one or two tragedies.

Agreed, if it some disgruntled postal employee or sumthin'

WHY IS THIS SO HARD FOR YOU TO UNDERSTAND.

Because I know "I have a bomb" can be interpretted sooooo many ways.

Point being, WE DON'T KNOW.

xpost again, damn you guys are fast

i.e. "This isn't right.. none of this is right! I can't stand you people! I fucking hate you! We're all gonna go down!"

Its Bush's fault!

Now this CNN story paints a little more of a complete picture. If accurate, it sounds to me that nickn's comments upthread were OTM. This guy didn't suddenly freak, he was in distress before the flight and I'd say his wife should never have tried to board with him. That, or approach the airline personnel and explain what was going on. Perhaps she thought she could talk him through it. Bad decision.

I dont trust people with fanny-packs anyways. Thats justification enough.
True that, I knew we could get along!

If this is what he said, then, yes, the situation MAY have been handled differently.

If he said he had a bomb, then, tragic though it is, you can't blame the air marshal for doing his job.

Sadly, I feel like this will end up as the US's very own London subway shooting. 'Cept that this guy was being threatening (how ever vaguely/crazily) and the Brazilian guy just had a big coat on.

Thing is, of course they interpret; there's no way to get entirely around that. Which is why, hindsight-wise, there will inevitably be whole crews of people studying how this incident went down, checking it against standard procedure, and considering if there are any tweaks to standard procedure that might maximize good outcomes. And they'll probably decide that standard procedure is as good as we can do right now, but it's nice to think that they double-check.

What Tracer's getting at is the important part of the "interpretation" -- what did the air marshal hear that he interepreted as meaning "I have a bomb," and why didn't anyone else hear it? Standard procedure would surely be for him to "neutralize" anyone who says anything along the lines of "I have a bomb" -- but what he considers equivalent to that statement is wide-open for judgment (and errors of judgment).

A former air marshal says "If they were telling the guy not to reach in the bag, as soon as the guy reached in the bag, that's a situation that necessitates the use of deadly force."

I agree. So I guess the question would be, did they tell him not to reach into the bag?

Spink, I hear you about this, but these guys are public servants and we get to ask as many questions as we want, it's part of the deal.

(xpost yet again)

Weird thing about that story = there's a lot of material on the wife's boarding behavior, but none on his! She was trying to soothe him, etc., okay, but what in the world was he doing while she soothed? I mean, apparently something weird enough to freak all hell out of a lot of surrounding folks.

* (I.e., the rules are such that they're not supposed to be deciding on the fly whether someone seems like a major threat or maybe just mentally ill -- they're meant to execute a series of procedural actions, period. Though of course they do interpret: if it were a nine-year-old girl reaching into her My Little Pony backpack after being told not to, I doubt many marshals would still be robotic and procedural enough to shoot her.)

I assume the phone call she took that upset her was the phone call informing her that her husband's medication was still sitting on the dining room table.

I agree that the lack of description of the man's behavior is strange.

The suicide-by-cop theory sounds as good as any so far.

"He was standing up against the wall with his wife," said Alan Tirpak, a fellow passenger on American Airlines Flight 924 to Orlando, who spotted Mr. Alpizar next to the passageway leading to their plane around 2 p.m. "He looked agitated - had a very nervous, agitated look to him. As I walked past them, his wife told him, 'Let's let these people get on first. It will be O.K.' "

...One marshal said that air marshals are typically the first to board planes, even before the disabled and travelers with young children, and that Wednesday's incident had occurred before the plane door was closed. He theorized that the marshals had probably not had a chance to observe Mr. Alpizar in the boarding lounge.

From today's NYT.

Seven passengers interviewed by the Orlando Sentinel -- seated in both the front and rear of the main passenger cabin -- said Alpizar was silent as he ran past them on his way to the exit. One thought he had taken the wrong flight. Another thought he was going to throw up.

"I can tell you, he never said a thing in that airplane. He never called out he had a bomb," said Orlando architect Jorge A. Borrelli, who helped comfort Alpizar's wife after the gunfire. "He never said a word from the point he passed me at Row 9. . . . He did not say a word to anybody."

Two teens seated in Row 26 agreed. So did Jorge Figueroa, a power-plant operator from Lakeland seated a few rows behind first class.

"He wasn't saying anything; he was just running," Figueroa said. "I said to myself, 'It is probably a person who took the wrong plane.' "

Wife tried to explain

What Alpizar's fellow passengers did hear were the desperate explanations from Buechner, Alpizar's wife, who at first seemed embarrassed by her husband's hasty exit. She started to follow him off the plane, saying, "He's sick. He needs to get off the plane," witnesses said.

But she had forgotten her bag and turned back to retrieve it. That's when passengers heard yelling from the jetway.

Investigators say that two undercover air marshals followed Alpizar off the plane and ordered him to surrender. The marshals say Alpizar yelled that he had a bomb and would use it. He walked toward them, they backed up, he started to put his hands in his backpack, and they fired. Alpizar was hit by multiple shots fired by both officers.

"With all the advances that the U.S. has supposedly made in their war against terrorism, I can't conceive that the marshals wouldn't be able to overpower an unarmed, single man, especially knowing he had already cleared every security check," Carlos Alpizar said Thursday of his brother's death, in a telephone interview from Costa Rica.

Except that they didn't know he was unarmed nor should they have assumed him to be so--well, the guy declared he had a bomb and was going to use it, but I guess in Costa Rica that's different than being armed.

And next time some lunatic has a bomb and says he's going to use it, I fully expect marshalls to shoot him if he won't surrender (though preferably in non-vital but painful areas) as opposed to get into some wrestling match where a bomb might possibly be detonated.

so he can detonate the bomb?

My understanding is that they essentially have the same kind of "shoot to kill" protocol as London does (did). We've all seen those movies where the trigger is as subtle as taking your finger off a trigger.

Lesson: Say "mom," "pomme," "CD-ROM," or call out to Dom or Tom in the airport at your own risk.

The word of two marshals vs. the whispers of conspiracy theorists?

Finally...someone on ILX-ILM who knows my 'hood...

have you ever been shot in a non-vital but painful area before?

the reason to doubt the claims about the bomb is based on the changing story of the police department - they first claimed he said bomb while still on the plane. they could well have been misinformed, so i don't necessarily begrudge them that. so assume the guy did in fact say he had a bomb while on the jetway, which i tend to believe. does that speak for itself? not necessarily, as far as i'm concerned. the guy had Gotten Off the Plane. he only said anything when the marshals tried to stop him (presumably with guns drawn). his wife had already said that he was sick (not that it's clear the marshals were aware of this). they had a split second, perhaps, to decide what to do when he approached them. but it was hardly a split second before he approached them.

have you ever been shot in a non-vital but painful area before?

have you? are you an irrational 'religious' extremist prepared for death and possibly seriously medicated?

wasn't the marshall's account (one of them, anyway) that he "reached for his bag" or something?

I haven't been shot before, but I think it's reasonable to assume that if multiple marshalls are firing at areas other than the chest/abdomen/head area from a distance of less than 20 feet that a person in this situation would be quickly immobilized without having the chance to manually detonate a bomb.

(And why are you bothering to pick a fight with me on this detail? Are you bored or what?)

wasn't the marshall's account (one of them, anyway) that he "reached for his bag" or something?

yeah, it was a split second after he made his way down an aisle with people in it, got off the plane, headed down the jetway, stopped, turned around, said something, and walked towards them

Shortly after boarding, Mr. Alpizar left his seat and exited the aircraft with a backpack strapped to his chest, yelling that he had a bomb.

Air Marshals who were assigned to the flight, followed him out the jetway, identified themselves as Federal Air Marshals and ordered Mr. Alpizar to surrender himself. Mr. Alpizar then walked towards the Marshals, causing them to retreat towards the entrance to the aircraft. Meanwhile, Mr. Alpizar yelled that he had a bomb and would use it. Mr. Alpizar continued to disregard the Marshals' orders to surrender and began to place his hands into the backpack. At that point, the Marshals discharged their firearms at Mr. Alpizar, who expired at the scene from his wounds.

But in case you don't want to, here's some advice: if you're ever getting on the subway and marshalls are shouting at you to "Stop!" and ordering you to surrender after you've claimed that you have a bomb and will use it, get your hands out of your backpack and put them into the air.

what's your source on this?

No, I think it's been pretty well publicised that there was reason to think that Alpizar constituted some sort of threat. And saying they killed him because it's their job is ludicrous. I assume these guys have been armed on other flights and have managed to restrain themselves from pumping bullets into innocent passengers posing no threat to others. They are trained to kill WHEN NECESSARY. There's a great big difference.

Nobody even knows who you are until you kill somebody.

i suppose we shouldn't consider drawing any negative inference from the fact that the marshals in question have been placed on leave?

we probably shouldn't, i'd bet that's s.o.p. for most law enforcement in this country, whether shootings were "justified" or not.

(xpost, it is in the UK, anyway I thought marshals weren't police so maybe they have it in their employment terms)

hard as it may be for you to believe, gabbneb, I imagine this incident was somewhat upsetting for the air marshals.

yes, i'd think it is. i could be wrong, tho.

I'm sure many people are looking at this closely and asking a lot of questions (media, police, federal types, airlines, etc.).

I think most of the reaction on this thread is based on a) the facts we know about this case, b) the issue of security of airlines makes many, if not most people, paranoid enough to trust what we have been told. Gab, your posts have had a noticeable degree of conspiracy sniffing rather than facts that point to unanswered questions, unless I should assume that you are very familiar with Miami-Dade leave-granting guidelines.

But I do admire your being suspicious of Tha Police. You're that much closer to being suspicious of the rest of the government!

why do you assume this is hard for me to believe? in fact, i assume that the marshals are upset. perhaps, you know, because this is such a gray area?

is there somewhere on this thread that i have distrusted what i have been told?

my posts have a noticeable degree of interest in a lawyerlike consideration of every side of the question

i'm not suspicious of the police. i'm suspicious of those who would refuse suspicion.

Pretty sure it's SOP to put cops on leave when someone dies. Any time someone gets killed by a gov't agent ('cept, like, in wars and stuff), they'll mount an investigation, even if it's cut and dried.

fwiw.

i'm not suspicious of the police. i'm suspicious of those who would refuse suspicion.

You seem more suspicious of people on this thread whose suspicions don't go nearly as far as your do, which you attribute to your lawyerness or, obliquely, an implied lack of intellectual curiosity in others' posts. Sometimes lawyering your way around everything doesn't make you seem intellectually impartial, it makes you seem like you're hiding your feelings on something.

(hint: i don't have any!)

and that's exactly my point--that you think you don't have feelings on this, but everyone else thinks you do! It comes with the territory I suppose, or at least with the career for lots of people in your line of work, right?

Alisa, my point in all this is that two police officers shot and killed one man who, in fact, was no threat whatsoever. If my understanding is correct, they also shot him on a jetway, which is one of the LEAST crowded places you'd find in an airport. There are many reports (and film) of him acting erratically and/or sick.

Sure, hindsight is 20/20, but in effect we have a man who was killed because he didn't stop when law enforcement asked him to. I'm sure the marshals are disturbed by what happened. Part of the situation with the London shooting was that there was a "shoot to kill" policy in place. That environment was one of the enabling factors for the incident. What kind of environment do the marshals work in? What kind of training do they have?

I'd just feel a lot better about this if someone besides the people who shot the man had heard him say he had a bomb. Imagine what might have happened if the plane had taken off? Killing someone should be a LAST resort.

The other point is the one I made upthread, which gabbneb echoed--is there any room in the marshal's prescribed response for any kind of assessment of the credibility of the threat presented? should there be?

i suppose some here aren't exactly happy about this, but have read the evidence of what occurred and decided this is the price for the safety of the majority -- there are split-second decisions that must be taken, and the few times those decisions are wrong are worth all the times they are right. (what are those times when they are right? when someone was shot to death on the tarmac and it turned out they were going to blow up the plane)

the only people who have given the "bomb" story are the very people who have everything to gain from the man saying it, and everything to lose if he hadn't said it. anyone who wouldn't wonder about this would make a very bad policeman and a very bad lawyer.

i am not with those who say being an air marshal is a thankless job. on the contrary, it is a job that garners the highest sorts of praise for the very things most men and women dream of possessing: courage, tenacity, toughness and patriotism. they hear it all the time, couched in terms both pious and sincere. they are a very well-thanked group of people.

no one can be perfect at their jobs. when your job is to enforce laws with violence if necessary, you'd much rather make a mistake that kills one person than a mistake which kills 100, i'd imagine (not ever having been in that position). there must be situations in which everyone is genuinely confused about what's going on, and wondering if there is one more second to spare or not. this appears to have been one of those situations. the result of this situation is that an innocent man was shot to death. my preference would be to find out why, and see if it's possible to make sure this doesn'r repeat itself a week or a month or a year from now. such an investigation requires knowing all the facts, and knowing all the facts necessitates a healthy skepticism of all the testimony, especially from those who stand the most to gain or lose from them. the unwillingness to go down this road by some posters here is very disturbing.

i see some of my points have been cross-posted by the elite squadrons of ilx

this has already been seriously brought into question

xpost i currently have my shoes strapped aggressively to my feet