Identifying drug couriers in airports
Mike Oolman, Mark Parker, Nathan Meehan, Alex Garinther · Journal of Airport Management · 2019
With the goal of understanding and combating the transportation of narcotics through airport systems, this paper provides a descriptive analysis of how drug couriers move through airports and the behaviours associated with their doing so. Utilising the expertise of veteran courier interdiction subject matter experts, the authors catalogued 69 distinct behaviours in seven topic categories. These include ticket characteristics, luggage characteristics, general behaviours, deceptive behaviours, verbal behaviours, nonverbal behaviours and group behaviours. These behavioural indicators are situated within eight sub-environments. Developing an understanding of the unique context of airport environments is essential to assessing behaviour and using behavioural cues to identify the concealed transportation of drugs and money by individuals or groups. This represents a skill set relevant to security and law enforcement personnel protecting transportation systems.