Metro cops at airport cope with idle time

Cathy Scott

Tuesday, Aug. 6, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

Two Metro Police officers have testified that they often had time to kill working at the McCarran International Airport substation, enough that they regularly played boyish pranks on other cops.

The pranks included switching off lights when one of their fellow officers was using the men's room, throwing wet toilet paper into restroom stalls while they were occupied and hiding each other's shoes.

"We have a lot of free time to kill," Officer Michael Hawk testified during Friday's trial of former Officer Mark Beckerle on a misdemeanor theft charge. He was acquitted.

Beckerle said there were more practical jokes done at the airport than at any other Metro division because of "a lot of idle time."

"We had a lot of spare time on our hands," he said. Beckerle and Hawk described the antics as juvenile pranks.

Officer Gary Maasch testified that the officers "joked around a lot."

But Sgt. Gary Nicol, while admitting that the officers "played verbal jokes on each other," said the antics "are very limited in Metro today."

Beckerle, 38, lost his job after he played what he called a practical joke on two fellow officers, sticking them with his $8.50 dry cleaning bill.

But the officers didn't take it as a joke. Instead, based on their complaints, Beckerle was arrested in February on a misdemeanor petty larceny charge. The case was tried Friday in Justice Court, and he was acquitted.

A lieutenant, six sergeants, 35 officers and five dispatchers man the substation at the south end of the main terminal. It has a $4 million budget.

Lt. Randall Whitney, who heads the airport substation, said: "For the most part, it's like police work that comes in spurts. They (officers) have regular beats."

Whitney said the officers at the airport have plenty to do.

McCarran is "a growing airport property that's becoming a city in itself," he said.

That "city" has 10,000 employees, with 22 million passengers a year. Metro has had a substation there since the mid-1970s, said Nora Cooper, a McCarran spokeswoman. McCarran is the 10th busiest airport in the country and the 13th largest worldwide.

Metro responded to 42,354 requests for service calls at McCarran, "everything from traffic accidents to disturbance calls to background searches," Whitney said. Of those calls, officers cited 164 people and arrested 160.

Officers also respond to the passenger screening areas if someone has a weapon in carry-on baggage. The also inspect abandoned baggage for anything suspicious, he said.

Since last year, Metro has confiscated 58 firearms, 10 knives and three brass knuckles.

The private security company "impounds anything that's not considered a weapon, such as fake grenades or fake swords," Whitney said.

McCarran was put on Level 3 security after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and in preparation for this year's Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

Besides Metro, security guards also patrol McCarran.

"There are three arms of security here," Cooper said, counting Metro, the FAA and airport personnel.

That doesn't include the people who man the scanners and security checkpoints, who work for Lomprey Investigations, a Las Vegas subsidiary of Argon Bright in Los Angeles.

Metro detains people and confiscates weapons detected by airport security, Whitney said.

Officers also escort foreign dignitaries and political VIPs from their planes, Whitney said. Most recently, a Middle Eastern dignitary whose life had been threatened required a police escort, he said, as well as President Clinton when he was here.

As for the officers saying they had a lot of spare time working at the airport, two of them are no longer working there, Whitney said.

While he said he couldn't discuss Hawk because it was "a personnel matter," he did note that Hawk was transferred out of the airport detail months ago and assigned to another substation.