Airport Rent-A-Cops Who Dragged Dr. Dao Off Plane Have Been Fired

@Jyee, I appreciate your comments and I realize your comments represent the majority view. I will say upfront that whatever triggered the "decision" to remove the passenger certainly needs to be investigated, and it needs to be identified if the very reason might have altered this final outcome. United should be held liable for any wrongdoing with regard for the reason. But aside from that, I take what I believe to be the minority view. And, given the likely large number of customers or passengers that have to be "removed," I think the reason in this case If I curbed my comments to one thing I would simply, if any of us were the CEO or any other position of leadership, what would we have done to prevent this end result? I would be hard pressed for me to believe or even claim that I would have "reasonably foreseen" this outcome. And without foreseeing it, I do not think I would have altered policies, training, or hiring processes to address it. Perhaps others have more of a crystal ball than I do. Call the "police" what you want, they were not employees or contractors of United. They were employees of the Airport Authority, part of the local municipality or municipalities. United likely had no right or even window of opportunity to require anything on the Authority to do anything - it was that agencies job to address and handle these personnel and to train them to execute the duties of that job. And, it was the employees responsibility to act accordingly...in addition to follow the law and act like a responsible human. (emphasis added) No doubt, the decision to remove does pass the "but for" test: but for the decision to remove, the man would not have been harmed. However, there is no "causal connection." Airlines and Merchants of all kinds remove customers, often times with help from the police. I find it hard to believe that they would reasonably believe the outcome to be like this one. In the end, United offered so much money. Sufficiently so that the passenger settled rather than took advantage of popular opinion and filed legal action. But United did not stop there. They offered a sum so high, that the passenger waived all rights to take action against the Airport Authority as well as the "police." In my view...that's some pretty hefty responsibility! I would ask, what more would you expect them to do? And if you felt they needed even more punishment, do you feel that punishment should go to the passenger? Just me. But it is sad that people escape personal responsibility in a multitude of situations. Oddly, with body cams on police, we seem to be going after the individual police offices for their actions. While I agree, I wonder why more people are not wanting to go after the municipality that hired them? Why do we focus on companies when an employee commits sexual harassment? No doubt if a company tolerates or encourages such within the environment, they should be corrected. But all to often we don't so much as investigate such matters before we take our eyes of the perpetrator and look immediately to the company. I am joking or over dramatizing here in part, but I wonder if a mass murderer would be indemnified if he was doing it on the clock? Surely the company failed to train the man. They company obviously hired him. And, the company failed to identify the future outcome or otherwise prevent the act(s). Must be the fault of the company. I guess if I am going to do any wrong or illegal actions I best do it while employed. Perhaps then I will be indemnified.

@Jeff Shilling: Focusing on the perpetrators in situations like this is largely useless and we *should* focus on the companies. Simply firing the perpetrators without deep introspection of the company would just be scape-goating and is often used by companies to maintain the status quo. Unfortunately when most people focus on the companies, they do so because the companies have money and can be sued for a lot. But the real reason we should focus on companies is that companies dictate policies and define culture (i.e. appropriate/inappropriate behavior), which if not addressed will lead to repeat incidents. Most employees go to work with the intention of doing a good job. When an incident occurs, you have to ask if someone had bad intention (bad apples, etc) and then the focus should be on improvement of hiring practices, otherwise you'll keep hiring bad apples and repeating the incidents. Secondly if there was no bad intent, you have to ask how the incident arose and what information was at hand, then work to improve processes and information sharing. I think United has problems with both - they hired/contracted bad apples who had no respect for passengers, and they also had bad policies that not only led to the overbooking, but also led to the confrontation. They've said they've addressed the policies, but they've largely ignored the hiring/contracting, so I wouldn't be surprised if we hear future stories of assaulting passengers.

It's too bad that Oscar was not fired along w/ the rental cars. But UAL stock took a beating today thanks to stupid Oscar . Yay!

The Trolly dollies are funny! 9 to 5 etc....Their vids are pretty cool and wish they were FAs on our flights.. That's big a compliment.

It was a very aggressive and hostile society that produced these 'rent-a-cops'. Thankfully, they're removed from service.