Next time it might not be a guy in “women’s red pants and a smart brown sweater.” This just underscores the abject failure of the hugely costly post-9/11 airport security apparatus. “Cross-dressing man caught on Newark runways,” by Philip Messing for the New York Post, December 25:
The Port Authority”s pricy perimeter-protection system failed again Wednesday when it failed to detect that a man “” dressed as woman “” had hopped a fence at Newark Airport and wandered across two runways, sources told The Post.
Siyah Bryant, 24, of Jersey City, was wearing women’s red pants and a smart brown sweater as he allegedly walked onto the tarmac at about 4:20 a.m. after tryst in a car near the airport went bad.
Newark’s Perimeter Intrusion Detection System should have alerted officials to Bryant’s presence long before he took his turn on the runway “” but the $300 million-plus system flunked.
“The [PIDS] cameras were operating and he was not detected by the PIDS system,” a source said.
Bryant’s misadventure began while he was on “a date” with another man and their car ran out of gas on the New Jersey Turnpike, sources said.
Bryant “felt uncomfortable” when his pal called a third man to bring them fuel, so he set off on foot, sources said.
He allegedly scaled the security fence and rambled unnoticed across two runways before trying to enter Terminal C, where he was confronted by a United Airlines worker, who called cops.
He was charged with criminal trespass.
The PIDS system includes cameras that watch the airport’s outer fence, which is topped with barbed wire and lined with sensors to detect climbers. It remains unclear why Bryant was not spotted.
“This is an ongoing investigation,” PAPD chief Louie Koumoutsos said. “The PAPD is continuing to review PIDS video and other surveillance methods to determine the circumstances of the incident.”
“The individual involved was arrested, checked against the [Joint Terrorism Task Force] and FBI watch list, issued a summons and released,” Koumoutsos said. ”
A police insider insisted that the embarrassing security lapse led to various police supervisors being called in and grilled about the failure to detect the intruder, who was able to walk about a mile across a what is supposed to be a highly restricted area, without anyone knowing about his presence until he sought police aid….