Now that Stephen Jackson has been fired from JFK Airport, he means to expose the place for keeping slack security. What’s his beef? Too many guards nap. He says he regularly caught maybe 6 a day napping on the job, and as JFK is a target for terrorists, this is not a matter of small importance. The former manager for FJC Security took pictures of sleeping employees, and after he was dismissed shared them with The Post.
The photos, for their part, are incriminating enough. They feature different guards sleeping on the job, and sometimes these people remained sleeping even after he harassed them to get back up and do their job. Suhas Harite, 68, for instance, was caught sleeping twice at a remote post near Jamaica Bay.
A 36 second cell phone video of Harite taken in March shows Jackson approach the sleeping Harite, exclaiming, “come on, buddy. Wake up!” and he honks his horn. “Beeping the horn, nothing. A plane’s taking off.”
Jackson is accused of having sour grapes, by Mike McKeon, an FJC spokesman. “The first we heard about this was after he was disciplined,” said McKeon. “He said, ‘If you fire me, I’m going to take this to The Post.’ I’ll give him this: At least he was a man of his word with regard to this.
“Had he done this while on the job, he would have been commended. But he didn’t do this.”
Jackson, meanwhile claims he was fired on May 28 after being harassed for whistle-blowing and being Hispanic. Specifically, he was fired over a technicality that he let a worker into a restricted area who didn’t have an ID on him, though Jackson said a supervisor told him to let the man in, and he normally had access to that area.
Whatever the case, sleeping security guards is not a good thing, even if they have been exposed as a sort of personal revenge for Jackson. PA Spokeswoman Lisa MacSpadden said, “FJC guards should do their napping at home, not on the job.” Of course! So what are we going to do about it?
Image Credit: New York Post
