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San Luis Obispo officer attempts to board plane with loaded gun

January 30, 2025

Officer’s firearm found at San Luis Obispo airport during screening

By KAREN VELIE

An on-duty San Luis Obispo officer was stopped at the city’s airport security check after the routine X-ray screening found a handgun loaded with 16 rounds of ammunition in the officer’s carry-on bag on Wednesday.

Upon seeing the image of the firearm on the X-ray screen, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) staff contacted the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Department who responded to the security checkpoint.

After removing the firearm from the X-ray tunnel, a deputy spoke with the SLO officer, who was headed to Denver International Airport. Investigators ultimately allowed the SLO officer to board the flight to Denver.

“Firearms brought by travelers in carry-on luggage continue to be an issue at airports across the country including San Luis Obispo County Regional Airport,” according to Federal Security Director Anita Minaei. “My hope is that highlighting the discovery of this firearm will be an incentive for gun owners to reacquaint themselves with the rules on traveling with a firearm on a commercial aircraft.”

In general, firearms can be transported on a commercial aircraft only if they are unloaded, packed in a locked, hard-sided case and placed in checked baggage.

However, federal law authorizes police officers to carry firearms on airplanes in checked luggage, or carried on their person, if necessary, with the completion of administrative forms in advance.

The officer, who was traveling for an investigation, had planned to place her firearm in her checked luggage, but mistakenly placed the gun in her carry-on bag, according to the San Luis Obispo Police Department.

“The San Luis Obispo Police Department will be conducting an internal review of this incident,” according to the press release. “We regret the disruption and would like to thank our law enforcement partners at TSA for keeping our community and travelers safe here in SLO.”

 


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“Investigators ultimately allowed the SLO officer to board the flight to Denver.” Really? So TSA and the SLO Sheriff aided and abetted interstate flight (literally) of a suspect? Now they will have to extradite the SLO officer to get her to come back to California where she will be safe from prosecution in our sanctuary state. (I could have more fun with this if I knew the name of the officer. I will just have to speculate. It wasn’t Walsh by any chance?)

Did they give her gun back to her? One can only hope not. But, if not, she will be unarmed in Denver? Untenable! She will have nothing to leave in the restroom at the El Pollo Loco at the Denver airport resulting in no plausible explanation for warrantless searches of random houses when she gets there. Or she may be left helpless if she needs to batter a senior citizen or a child on the way out of the airport.

Anyway, it is good to know that it is not a crime to attempt to get a gun through security at the SLO airport. Federal Security Director Anita Minaei should have said “My hope is that highlighting the discovery of this firearm” without consequences “will be an incentive for gun owners to” make the same attempt. Failure to arrest the SLO officer is possibly not going to be the deterrent Ms. Minaei had hoped it would be.


-5

We get very comfortable as American Citizens. Packing a gun for a living includes the first priority to have control of your firearm, understandably overlooking the realm of checking it in as luggage becomes a planning for the next new layer of priorities. Yes, a responsible mistake but not like the basketball talent who had medical pot in her possession during travel to Russia, but I’m an American!, wrong answer because you are now in a different jurisdiction so new rules which don’t care who or where you came from. Sadley we are becoming a bubble within the many bubbles in this country, where your every movement is tracked. Travel plans have become very important these days because of the new world we live in. A private citizen with a license to carry a concealed firearm technically cannot do so when going into the post office (a Federal Building) to pick up their mail. But who knows if concealed until there is a metal detector, just like we have at our court houses, State Fair grounds or many other public events. Yikes, then you go to tourist attraction in Mexico and wonder where the role of TP is, whoops they sell it outside, priced per little square before you go to the throne. So, what does the throne and firearms have in common? Planning and memory.


-5

(TSA) Probably stopped something, horrible from happening . Cops are dangers people .


-3

In case anyone was curious, you can’t put loaded firearms in your carry-on bag either. So, this cop broke the law by forgetting to break the law, and was not held responsible for her actions.


25

Classic cop behavior. “But the rules don’t apply to me! I’m going to have a sloppy cry over being held accountable!”


15

“mistakenly placed the gun in her carry-on bag” ???


27

This female officer must have taken lessons from her past superior, Deanna Cantrell, who left her gun in the bathroom of an El Pollo Loco….


62

Def trained by her!! HA!

So was the plane delayed because of it?


1

Ultimate “Professional Courtesy”. Anyone else would be sitting in jail after bringing a firearm to the airport claiming to “Forget” to put it in the checked baggage… and not doing the proper paperwork in advance. Should be Fairness for all.


73

She will get hers at work for her boneheaded action.


6

Just more proof how LEO’s are held to a much lower standard and don’t have to follow the same laws they enforce, nothing new here.


37