Fort Lauderdale, Fla. — Earlier this month, we marked 25 years since the September 11th attacks. After that terrible day, so much about airports and airplane security changed in America.
For the past few years, the CBS12 News I-Team has periodically done stories about concerns at PBIA (now called Donald J Trump airport) and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood.
There’s an update from both locations because there have been new examples of how easy it is to miss potential dangers, but officials don’t want to — or can’t– talk about it.
When the I-Team began working on this report in early August, a strange story, a troubling one, had just surfaced. The kind of thing that makes you go, “What?”
32 year old Sam Prescott Lackey, was found asleep in a bathroom on a JetBlue plane at a facility near Fort Lauderdale’s airport.
The Broward County Sheriff’s Office says he scaled an 8-foot barbed wire fence and got into a restricted area, not near the terminal, but then was able to walk up a set of portable stairs, board the plane, and get some shut-eye for a few hours in the restroom in the back of the cabin. He was discovered by employees and arrested.
It appears the only thing he wanted was a place to curl up, but his ability to get onto the airliner undetected is alarming.
Security around the perimeter of Fort Lauderdale’s airport is handled by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. But perhaps not for much longer.
The Broward County Commission has a big say about the Sheriff’s budget. Commissioners also oversee the county’s aviation department.
The I-Team had booked two commissioners to be interviewed on camera for this story, but as the day of the interviews approached, a behind-the-scenes legal battle was unfolding.
Then, the entire commission was subpoenaed by the Office of Statewide Prosecution— under the control of Florida’s Attorney General, James Uthmeier.
The state isn’t saying much, but commissioners say this has to do with the future of airport security.
The county hired a consulting firm to do a “feasibility study” about removing the Sheriff’s office from the airport and creating a new law enforcement agency specifically for the airport. Not uncommon, lots of Florida airports have their own police departments.
But this possibility and the fall-out from it is why no official will appear in this report and everyone involved has issued carefully worded statements to the I-Team, directing them to other agencies.
From Fort Lauderdale to West Palm Beach
6 years ago, the I-team began reporting on the parking garages at the airport and a lack of security cameras inside them. Shortly after our stories aired, the airport installed cameras. But who is monitoring them and were they installed everywhere remains unclear.
An incident last September, which didn’t raise any controversy at the time, deserves a second look, according to a source with inside knowledge of the airport.
On Sept 9, 2025 a man was found dead near one of the parking garages. The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office said it was a suicide. The victim had jumped. But what’s odd is that it took nearly 24 hours for someone to notice his body. And it was a civilian who discovered the victim, not security.
And just last month, a woman is accused of breaching airport security at Donald J. Trump International Airport and running onto the taxiway before she was apprehended.
These three cases bring us to an interesting question: When everyone assumes someone else is watching, who actually is?
Under the Freedom of Information Act, The I-Team has asked TSA for any available stats about how many airport perimeter breaches there have been in the past year.
We are waiting on a response.