What Traffic Accidents Can Teach about LAX Shooting

In a nutshell, we must learn to calibrate our reaction thresholds to expedite timely return to business as usual. It worked for Churchill in WWII. It can work for America in the age of terror.

In communities where a highway fatality is rare, authorities reflexively close down an entire stretch of freeway to accommodate a painstaking and time-consuming accident investigation -- no matter what the expense or impact to commuters. In larger metropolitan areas where such events become so commonplace that commuters actually urge suicidal pedestrians to just jump off a highway overpass in order to end traffic congestion, the response tends to be different. Over time, seasoned patrol officers learn how to handle their investigation and protect the public while still managing to keep traffic moving. It isn't easy, but this latter response does take a certain finesse and savvy. It also takes judgment and insight to recognize the diminishing return of overreaction. Unnecessarily tormenting commuters with road closures to prolong an accident investigation is the kind of mindless move that telegraphs either insecurity or abuse of authority once such action begins to amplify more problems than it solves. There is a prudent middle ground between ignoring a corpse until after rush hour and choking all traffic to the point of turning a commute into a day-long experience. No thinking individual does either.

So what should a thinking official do when a shooter at an airport such as Los Angeles International (LAX) kills a TSA employee and wounds other unarmed people before himself being wounded and apprehended? The situation certainly dictates immediate tactics. Rapid cognition combined with savvy assessment should indicate whether this event has the markings of a terrorist attack with wider ramifications. On the surface of initial reports as of mid-day November 1, 2013, such indications were absent. Whatever targeting goes into a sophisticated terrorist attack, it is unlikely to be the work of a major terror plot if the only apparent casualties were TSA screeners and passersby. Any attack is tragic for innocent victims, but a strategic attack aims at a bigger target, more casualties, and a more shocking impact.

In the absence of such features, one must question the wisdom of shutting down incoming or outbound air traffic for LAX -- particularly if the attacker and weapon were both captured. If there were indications of an explosive device making it to an aircraft, of multiple shooters dispersed throughout LAX, of secondary attacks in progress, or of linkages to a coordinated attack against LAX or other airports, it might be wise to suspend airport operations long enough to protect people and render safe any dangerous devices. Absent such things, though, disruption of LAX operations under the banner of security appears more reflexive than wise. It is reflexive because, given a choice, authorities gravitate to the option that will shield them from liability and negative press. They don't want to face accusations of not responding vigorously to a visible threat, so the natural reaction is to make up for deficient planning and defenses by ostensible overkill.

Is the reflexive response the right one? An airport which averages one outgoing flight every 55 seconds and is the third busiest in the country cannot and should not embrace reflexive shutdown without regard for the cascading impact that this action produces nationwide for commercial aviation.

Sometimes the reflexive and convenient and risk averse response is precisely the wrong one. Shutting down flights and significant parts of LAX operations in knee-jerk response to this incident -- unless justified by threat intelligence not made public -- appears to be exactly the kind of response akin to closing down an entire big city freeway all day to investigate a single accident whose cause and effect have been 80% assessed within the first hour. On the surface, such overreaction appears less than wise.

-- Nick Catrantzos