This browser does not support the Video element.
Former Detroit police chief on second DTW car crash incident
Ralph Godbee, the former Detroit police chief, weighs in on last Friday's car crash into the Metro Airport terminal in Romulus - the second such incident in just a handful of months.
FOX 2 - Last Friday a driver crashed his SUV through the doors of the Warren C Evans Terminal at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus.
The backstory:
This is the second time a driver has crashed into the airport this year. In January, a man crashed into the McNamara terminal. Many are questioning the security and asking: Could this happen again?
Former Detroit Police Chief Ralph Godbee said someone severely dropped the ball in making the airport safe.
He says an investigation needs to happen now, and the public has to be reassured that the airport is, in fact, safe.
Godbee was asked what are the powers that be doing after two incidents happening so close together.
"If I'm sitting in that seat, which I know the former Michigan State Police director is, I'm making sure we dot every 'i' and cross every 't,'" he said. "When you're dealing with a municipal budget, a budget is a budget. Unfortunately, an airport is an airport. That's the trick with security — it is not a static process."
Some are speculating whether someone dropped the ball.
"I would have to say yes," he said. "But knowing Colonel Tadarial Sturdivant the way I do, somebody's head is rolling. When he ran state police and I worked with him collaboratively, he stuck with the details. He's a stickler for accountability, so whoever dropped the ball, he'll figure it out."
Friday's second airport crash remains under investigation.
And a man remains in police custody, likely awaiting charges, which should happen soon.
ADA and other requirements determine what kind of barriers can be used. Large planter boxes filled with concrete have been speculated as a possible explanation.
The driver went around a concrete barrier and crashed into a door of the terminal. He made it past the security checkpoint before stopping and was taken into custody.
The driver is a 67-year-old man who was driving the wrong way northbound in a southbound lane, going slow in a Cadillac SRX SUV steering around the bollard barriers.
The driver's mental state is being examined, as he told Sturdivant from the Wayne County Airport Authority.
"He made the statement he was there to meet Tom Cruise and to save his dad," Sturdivant said. "He gained access to gaps in the jersey barrier and drove through those gaps and drove through the door at a slow rate of speed."
The Source: Information for this report is from an interview