Airport police in Anchorage, AK run drills all the time at the airport to keep their officers fresh. Sometimes they'll borrow a car from the rental company inside the airport and use it in during their training. And sometimes the cops forget to tell the rental company which car they loaded with an explosive and it ends up being rented to a customer.
The K-9 unit at the Anchorage Airport was conducting a bomb sniffing drill and they used the lot of the rental car company as the staging grounds. Jesse Davis, chief of Airport Police and Fire at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport said it's a routine drill,
"An officer placed a small piece of explosive material onto a random car and the dogs
Airport police routinely work with rental car companies to expose bomb-sniffing dogs to different environments. During the trainings, very small amounts of an explosive are used to challenge the dogs. When we say 'explosives,' it's not a stick of dynamite."
Normally, they tell the rental car company ahead of time which cars are being used but this time around they rented a 'loaded' car before the information was passed on. To make matters worse the car was taken off the lot in front of a security guard. Davis said it was the perfect storm of fail, the officer on duty the guard the 'loaded' car turned his back for second to get something from his personal car. When he turned back around the car was gone. It was off the lot with a customer behind the wheel before he knew it. Chief Davis said it took them 3 hours to track down the car and added that the driver was in no real danger. He realizes it sounds bad to have a car with explosives strapped to it but they material wasn't live. He biggest concern is the failure of his department,
"The big thing, from our standpoint, that really alarmed us was more from the accountability side of it. These things are very controlled." Obviously.
Anchorage Daily News has the story
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