Fort Lauderdale, Fla. \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/a><\/p>\n There\u2019s an update from both locations because there have been new examples of how easy it is to miss potential dangers, but officials don\u2019t want to — or can\u2019t– talk about it.<\/p>\n 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, \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n 32 year old Sam Prescott Lackey, was found asleep in a bathroom on a JetBlue plane<\/a> at a facility near Fort Lauderdale\u2019s airport.<\/p>\n The Broward County Sheriff\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n It appears the only thing he wanted was a place to curl up, but his ability to get onto the airliner undetected is alarming.<\/p>\n Security around the perimeter of Fort Lauderdale\u2019s airport is handled by the Broward County Sheriff\u2019s Office<\/a>. But perhaps not for much longer.<\/p>\n The Broward County Commission has a big say about the Sheriff\u2019s budget. Commissioners also oversee the county’s aviation department.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Then, the entire commission was subpoenaed by the Office of Statewide Prosecution<\/a>— under the control of Florida’s Attorney General, James Uthmeier<\/a>.<\/p>\n The state isn\u2019t saying much, but commissioners say this has to do with the future of airport security.<\/p>\n The county hired a consulting firm to do a “feasibility study” about removing the Sheriff\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n From Fort Lauderdale to West Palm Beach<\/p>\n 6 years ago, the I-team began reporting on the parking garages at the airport and a lack of security cameras inside them.<\/a> Shortly after our stories aired, the airport installed cameras. But who is monitoring them and were they installed everywhere remains unclear.<\/p>\n An incident last September, which didn\u2019t raise any controversy at the time, deserves a second look, according to a source with inside knowledge of the airport.<\/p>\n