Jumping on the opportunity to legislate around a viral story pertaining to air travel, newly seated District 8 Supervisor Jeff Sheehy has asked the San Francisco City Attorney's office to draft legislation that would make it illegal for SFPD officers to interfere in the removal of passengers from airplanes at SFO.
This of course all relates to the story out of Chicago this week about 69-year-old United passenger David Dao who was forcibly removed from a Louisville-bound flight at O'Hare over the weekend in order to make space on the plane for United employees.
Sheehy points the finger at United and other airlines for the practice of overbooking flights, calling it "bad business policy," and tells ABC 7, "I don't think our police department should be cooperating with that."
The SFPD provides security in most parts of San Francisco International Airport, even though the airport is technically in San Mateo County. Department spokesperson Sgt. Michael Andraychak tells CBS 5 that he can't comment directly on the legislation, but that typically in situations involving a disturbance at the airport officers would "try to mediate a resolution" between any two parties. "We are the primary law enforcement agency for the airport, so if there was a disturbance anywhere for the airport, with the exception of the customs arrival area, we would respond to that call for service," Andraychak said in a statement.
Meanwhile, some victim-blaming began yesterday calling out the character of Dao, and United's stock took a significant plunge despite CEO Oscar Munoz doing an about-face and apologizing for what happened. Munoz also appeared on Good Morning America today to try to clean up this PR mess, which you can see below.