Police Officer Brings Gun Through LAX Security, Flies to Taiwan, Says ‘Oops’

A police officer entered LAX as a passenger last week with her gun and six bullets. She proceeded through airport security, and as usual they did not notice. She flew Los Angeles – Taipei enroute to Bangkok. On arrival in Taiwan on Thursday she realized she had her gun with her and notified authorities.

Here’s video of the officer at the airport:

It could have been worse, last year a police officer’s gun actually went off inside the cabin of a flight.

A year ago an active duty Marine brought 40 rounds of ammunition through security at LAX. Like the police officer he also flew Los Angeles to Taipei. The ammo was caught at transit security before his China Airlines connection to Okinawa. He had ‘forgotten to take them out’ of his bag, and didn’t have a gun with him to fire the bullets.

I think I’d come up with something more creative, considering that airport security in the Philippines has been known to actually plant bullets in passenger bags in order to extort money from them.

In perhaps the strangest story, in 2012 a flight attendant brought her gun through security at the Philadelphia airport and accidentally fired it into the TSA break room.

Even though the TSA misses most of the dangerous items passengers bring through the checkpoint, sometimes security actually does catch guns, but it’s easy to profile West Coast rappers.

Though when TSA does find a gun they’re just as likely to accidentally fire it and hit its owner.

The gun’s owner was telling Phillips how to clear the loaded .22 Magnum revolver when it was accidentally discharged, Phillips reported. “The weapon was pointed down towards the screening table.”

“I was grazed by a pellet fragment on the left side of my face,” Phillips wrote.

Another officer fired his gun inside the airport accidentally while practicing ‘quick draw’. Since standard protocol dictates you do that inside the terminal.

See, there are plenty of guns inside the terminal as it is. Just ask the air marshal who left his gun in the restroom in 2015 or the air marshal who left his gun in the restroom in 2016.

(HT: Catherine)

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Interesting anecdotes. But I’m still trying to figure out what the actually point of this post is.

  2. I think it’s about how Americans can bring fire arms on US outbound flights while we don’t allow Middle Easterners to bring iPads on US inbound flights.

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