Portland asks to scale back police at jetport because of overtime costs

PORTLAND – The city of Portland is asking the Federal Aviation Administration for permission to cut back on the number of officers standing watch at the Portland International Jetport.

The Police Department has the equivalent of 23 officers assigned to security at the Portland Jetport, compared to five officers working there shortly before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

More than half the airport shifts are being filled by officers with other full-time duties. These officers are working overtime at a cost to the jetport of almost $30,000 a week.

The heavy police presence was a condition of getting the airport reopened in the days immediately following the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Now, the city wants to scale back the security detail.

“We’re not scaling back the security of it, but … we anticipate it may require fewer police officers than it does right now to do the job,” said Deputy Police Chief William Ridge.

Portland’s Jetport was one of the launchpads for the Sept. 11 attacks, with two hijackers catching a flight from Portland to Boston, where they boarded one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center.

Immediately after the attack, the FAA shut down all commercial aviation. The next day, it issued a two-and-half page bulletin of new security measures that had to be in place before airports could reopen.

The city has since won waivers for some of those security restrictions. The airport can now use the parking garage located within 300 feet of the airport terminal and is not required to post an officer at the jetport access road.

“After a while you realize once you get everything under control, and you’re comfortable with security levels, you don’t need to have multiple checkpoints and police located every few feet, so we scale back to what’s reasonable,” said Portland Transportation Director Jeff Monroe said.

One reason the city is requesting the changes is because of the expense. The jetport pays the city almost $60 an hour for police officers on overtime. Officers, who are paid time-and-a-half but make much less than $60 an hour, are working roughly 60 overtime shifts a week.

That overtime expense is in addition to the cost of nine patrol officers, one sergeant and a lieutenant now assigned to the jetport full time.

“We’re absorbing it out of our reserves right now,” Monroe said. “I think, eventually, it will get passed on to airlines and ultimately to passengers.”

The FAA has fielded requests from many airports across the country seeking waivers to their security plans, said James Peters, FAA spokesman. “There are times when we do work with the airports to amend security plans, but only if there is no diminished level of safety,” he said.