Making Your Cruise Safer

March 2, 2008 by slcooper
Filed under Safety

If California state senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) has his way, you’ll be seeing an extra passenger aboard cruise ships sailing from California. In an effort to improve safety on cruise ships, a bill the state senator has authored would require a peace officer on board the ships.

If the measure passes, California would have the toughest state regulations in the $35 billion cruise industry…an industry that’s come under congressional and public scrutiny after several cases of missing people, passengers overboard and sexual assault were widely reported in the media.

“We’ve got air marshals on planes with a couple hundred passengers, but we’ve got no one on board the cruise ships with 10 times the number of passengers,” says California state senator Simitian.

The peace officer would ensure that reported crimes are handled appropriately on board, without interference from cruise line attorneys or others hired to protect the company’s image. Their salaries would be funded by a $1-a-day passenger fee. They’d also serve as license marine engineers who would monitor compliance with environmental laws - laws that Simitian has promoted.

International Cruise Victims President and co-founder, Ken Carver, says his group has lobbied for federal legislation to regulate the cruise industry and considers this state effort a “great step forward.”

Currently, cruise ships hire their own security officers, but increasingly, lawmakers and law enforcement officials are questioning whether that’s a lot like the fox guarding the hen house.

“On board security works for the cruise line, not for the passengers or public,” Simitian said. “There’s an inherent conflict of interest between the public relations goals of the employer and the public safety requirements of the passenger.”

Congressional hearings on cruise safety reveal cruise ship personnel are not trained to investigate crimes. Days can pass between an alleged crime and the start of a criminal investigation. If collected at all, evidence can be tainted by then.

Industry officials maintain their ships are safe and have opposed recent efforts to regulate the cruise industry. As yet cruise officials haven’t offered a position on Simitian’s legislation.

California’s $2 billion cruise industry, with ports in Long Beach, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego, represents about 14% of U.S. embarkations. In all, more than 1.2 million passengers departed from one of California’s cruise ports in 2006.