Deactivate Violence

Abstract

On December 7, 2005, Rigoberto Alpizar, a man with bipolar disorder, was shot dead at Miami International Airport by two federal air marshals. The justification for the killing was that Alpizar allegedly claimed he had a bomb. This remains controversial, as some fellow passengers on the plane with Alpizar, who was trying to leave in a state of great agitation, denied he ever uttered the word bomb. What is certain is that Alpizar’s wife followed him as he ran off the plane, and she was shouting that he was sick, had a mental illness, and was suffering from bipolar disorder and had not taken his medication that morning. A former air marshal instructor said to NBC News that air marshals are trained to ignore potential “distractions” when confronting a threat.¹ Ultimately, it was decided that they had acted by the rules, appropriately responding to a threat. Obviously, this is not the place to debate whether the word bomb was uttered or whether the air marshals acted according to their training rules. What is rather important is to highlight the human cost of a completely irrational approach to the question of security, which has reached its zenith in the so-called post-9/11 era.