Glaring gap in Sea-Tac security

When William Maddox pulled into Sea-Tac Airport to drop off his daughter for a flight, he had no idea he was about to expose a hole in airport security.

The cherry farmer was waiting in his truck for a spot at the Southwest Airlines curb. It was a busy Saturday in March. Traffic cops asked him to move. Accounts about what happened next vary wildly. Police say Maddox ignored them, then got hostile. Maddox says he pulled over and cooperated.

In the end, Maddox was pinned and tasered. His daughter says she was beaten with a baton. An officer says he got punched in the face.

Was it a case of unruly passengers? Or thuglike cops?

There was an obvious way to sort it all out. Just look at the tape from the security cameras.

When Maddox's attorney asked for the tape, what he heard back astonished him.

There was no tape. That's because there is no camera surveillance of the airport's arrival or departure drives.

These are the curbside areas of one of the busiest airports in the West. Where 20 million people pass through lugging bags each year.

I couldn't believe it, either. Last week I wrote how the Auburn SuperMall — which despite its name is a run-of-the-mill oval of outlet stores — had been declared "critical infrastructure" at risk of international-terrorist attack. It scored a digital-camera system at taxpayer expense.

So the SuperMall has counterterrorism video surveillance. And the airport doesn't?

"We do have cameras out on the drives and in the curbside area, but they are not watched and they are not generally turned on," Harland says.

She said the airport lacks resources to operate the cameras. It opted to run cameras only in some parts of the terminal. She wouldn't say where, because it's classified, and agreed to discuss the lack of outside surveillance only because I had evidence of it.

Yet in the fall of 2003, a woman named Desseria Whitmore collapsed and died after being stopped at a checkpoint inside Concourse D. Witness accounts varied so much an inquest jury couldn't reach consensus on what happened.

There was no tape then, either. Concourse D has cameras. They, too, were not turned on.

How is it that every two-bit minimarket can record security videos and the airport can't?

It's understandable that every square inch isn't monitored. And cameras aren't the top priority, compared with, say, screening passengers.

But suppose you're on the airport drive and you see someone casing and photographing the terminal. You tell police. Isn't it unsettling they have no way of going back to look?

Yes, I realize all the terrorists who regularly read my column have just been told there's no video surveillance outside the airport. Call me a traitor, à la The New York Times.

But I'm sorry — it's insane that five years after 9/11, we're fortifying a little-known mall. And not the airport.

Shouldn't homeland security make more sense by now?

Danny Westneat's column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.