Here’s an item for the annals of weird crimes/past times: One of the latest crazes sweeping the world, according to law enforcement authorities, is the practice of shining cheap laser pens into the eyes of airline pilots as they land.
The FBI on Monday issued a statement and explanatory videos reminding the public that such activity is a federal felony. The bureau also released dramatic footage of an actual incident showing a St. Louis, MO.-man on the ground flashing a green laser into the cockpit of a helicopter. The pilot promptly contacted law enforcement authorities, who quickly arrived and arrested the individual.
That individual was 24-year-old Justin Stouder, who said he had no idea that pointing the laser into the cockpit blinded everyone inside. He apologized in a Monday news conference held by the FBI for his “selfish mistake.”
Amazingly, the phenomenon has gotten so bad that law enforcement authorities in St. Louis have actually formed the “St. Louis Laser Strike Working Group,” to try to deal with the problem.
Individuals who are caught engaging in the practice can face a sentence of 20 years in jail, a $250,000 fine and a civil penalty from the Federal Aviation Administration of $11,000.
“There has been an exponential increase every year,” in what the FBI are calling “laser incidents,” said Tim Childs from the Federal Air Marshal Service.
Federal authorities recorded 2,800 incidents in the United States in 2010 — the most ever since authorities started keeping records on the incidents in 2005.
An article in Monday’s edition of The Scotsman also noted that such incidents are on the increase in Edinburgh, of all places, where people are shining lasers into motorists eyes and in one case into the cockpit of a fighter jet pilot.
“The growing number of attacks on aircraft at airports like Edinburgh are part of a global phenomenon,” a spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority told The Scotsman.
Here’s a video of the above-mentioned arrest:
