JFK airport guards dozing off while on duty have been caught on camera, part of what a former security supervisor said is an epidemic of lax security at the New York’s busiest airport.
Stephen Jackson, a former manager for FJC Security, which employs about 300 security guards at JFK Airport , said it was actually surprisingly common to see JFK guards dozing.
“It was a regular occurrence finding the guards sleeping,” said Jackson, a retired Marine who became security-guard supervisor at JFK in December. He was fired in May for what he calls a “campaign of harassment” against his whistleblowing and his Hispanic race.
One of the sleeping guards led to an embarrassing incident last year. Jackson said 68-year-old Suhas Harite fell asleep twice while assigned to a remote post near Jamaica Bay. In August a jet skier who became stranded breached a 6-foot-tall fence built as part of the New York Port Authority’s $100 million Perimeter Intrusion Detection System.
The jet skier managed to walk across two runways undetected.
In a video Jackson took last year, a man identified as Harite is seen sleeping behind the wheel of his vehicle while on duty.
“Come on, buddy. Wake up!” Jackson can be heard saying as he repeatedly honked his horn.
The JFK guards dozing are not the only black eye for security at the airport. Earlier this year TSA agents detained and questioned a man who described his sandwich as “the bomb.”
Jason Michael Cruz said he was waiting to catch a flight at JFK and was receiving the TSA patdown when he told a friend that a certain deli in Astoria made a 12-inch sandwich called “The Bomb.”
Both men were detained at a checkpoint and ultimately missed their flight.
“The TSA clerk probably got a merit badge for her quick thinking in reporting the Scary Terroristy Threat to a supervisor, and that supervisor probably got promoted. Meanwhile, Cruz missed his flight,” said an announcement on the TSA news blog .
What do you think should happen to the JFK guards dozing on the job?