Storm the cockpit?: Some fed agents have gone off deep end

Hopefully, what happened at the San Francisco International Airport last Saturday night wouldn’t happen at the McAllen Airport. Traumatized airline passengers aren’t conducive to repeat business.

Online now, there is video footage of a Delta co-pilot, in handcuffs, being led off the plane after landing in San Fran last Saturday night. Just go to YouTube.com and type in “Delta co-pilot arrested in San Francisco.”

According to news reports, the 34-year-old Delta pilot — whose name is Rustom Bhagwagar — is being charged with a felony crime — sex acts with a child under the age of 10.

This could have been any airline, any airport, like McAllen or Harlingen, and one has to hope that federal agents and local law enforcement (sheriff’s office) based in Hidalgo County would have handled it better here.

One TV news report on YouTube includes a brief interview with a passenger who sounds clearly shaken, saying she is in disbelief over what just happened:

“We were all shocked and stunned. What was happening? They barged through and stormed the cockpit, removed the co-pilot, cuffed him, presumably arrested him, and brought him back down the aisle to deplane.”

There were reportedly approximately 10 agents in all (Homeland Security and the Contra Costa County SO) who rushed the cockpit not long after the plane landed and the passengers started reaching for their bags. (Source: ABC News).

Why traumatize passengers like this?

“A passenger, who is related to a FOX Television staffer and happened to be on the flight, recounted that the federal agents told passengers to stay in their seats as they pushed through first class and into the cockpit.” (Source: Fox News.)

Is the local sheriff up for reelection, and he, could be a she, thinks the optics are good if some of his investigators bum rush a cockpit.

Thankfully, apparently, no one aboard had a serious heart condition.

Because face it, on every airliner, plane, there will be anxious passengers. They would choose not to fly but either work, family, has forced them to board a plane.

So they get safely to their destination, breathe a sigh of relief after the plane lands, parks at the gate, and here comes approximately 10 armed agents rushing down the aisle from the back of the plane to arrest an unarmed co-pilot.

Does that make sense to anyone? Even those with the thickest of heads?

If anyone with sense had been coordinating the arrest, they would have quietly and discreetly posted two agents outside the cockpit door so the co-pilot had nowhere to go, and then after all the passengers had disembarked, after telling the flight attendants what was happening, they would have taken the co-pilot into custody, placed him in handcuffs, and quietly led him out of the plane through the back door.

Instead, the agents/sheriff investigators in this story played the part in an action movie of their own making and created trauma where none needed to be.

Drug test them for steroids. Meanwhile, if the Delta co-pilot is guilty of the crime for which he’s been charged, sex acts with a child under the age of 10, then good luck with prison. Put him in general population.