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Almost Half Of All TSA Employees Have Been Cited For Misconduct (mercurynews.com)
Slashdot reader schwit1 writes: Almost half of all TSA employees have been cited for misconduct, and the citations have increased by almost 30 percent since 2013... It also appears that the TSA has been reducing the sanctions it has been giving out for this bad behavior.
Throughout the U.S., the airport security group "has instead sought to treat the misconduct with 'more counseling and letters that explain why certain behaviors were not acceptable'," according to a report from the House Homeland Security Commission, titled "Misconduct at TSA Threatens the Security of the Flying Public". It found 1,206 instances of "neglect of duty", and also cited the case of an Oakland TSA officer who for two years helped smugglers slip more than 220 pounds of marijuana through airport security checkpoints, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
The newspaper adds that "The misconduct ranges from salacious (federal air marshals spending government money on hotel rooms for romps with prostitutes) to downright dangerous (an officer in Orlando taking bribes to smuggle Brazilian nationals through a checkpoint without questioning)." Their conclusion? "The TSA's job is to make airline passengers feel safer and, not incidentally, actually make us safer. It's failing on both."
Throughout the U.S., the airport security group "has instead sought to treat the misconduct with 'more counseling and letters that explain why certain behaviors were not acceptable'," according to a report from the House Homeland Security Commission, titled "Misconduct at TSA Threatens the Security of the Flying Public". It found 1,206 instances of "neglect of duty", and also cited the case of an Oakland TSA officer who for two years helped smugglers slip more than 220 pounds of marijuana through airport security checkpoints, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
The newspaper adds that "The misconduct ranges from salacious (federal air marshals spending government money on hotel rooms for romps with prostitutes) to downright dangerous (an officer in Orlando taking bribes to smuggle Brazilian nationals through a checkpoint without questioning)." Their conclusion? "The TSA's job is to make airline passengers feel safer and, not incidentally, actually make us safer. It's failing on both."
The TSA's job is to make airline passengers feel safer and, not incidentally, actually make us safer.
That second part seems unlikely - is there any example of something they've done to make people safer? Creating security checks with choke points surely can't help with that. And the first seems contrary to their own interests - the route to getting more money for air security is clearly not to make people feel they're already safe.
After receiving several complaints, police detectives decided to follow a TSA agent in Seattle, and caught him filming up a woman's skirt while he followed her on an escalator.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
TSA was created by Bush as a knee jerk reaction to 9-11. I'm surprised Obama hasn't gotten rid of it.
However, government never seems to get smaller nor can it realize a mistake. It only perpetuates (in this case) an unnecessary bureaucracy.
Let's go back to metal detectors and private security. My tube of toothpaste isn't the problem.
TSA is.
Sort of. Every time there's a "report" from a House committee, it usually means one party has a press release they want to put out supporting a specific narrative. In this case, they've collected a bunch of statistics and anecdotes to create the impression "TSA bad!"
Which is fine. The TSA has always needed a lot of reform. I just wonder if this fits into some kind of election-year grandstanding about how America isn't safe, as a way to help win elections in November. Or maybe to support yet-another round of TSA budget cutting...
And the TSA are merely players on the great stage of Security Theater.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
"The TSA's job is to make airline passengers feel safer". The TSA 's job has never been to make air travel safer. Its job has always been security theater...to make it seem like the government was doing something to make us safer when flying. The TSA has really just made sure that many of us will not fly anywhere until it is disbanded! Personally I will not allow them to grope my genitals, nor will I allow nude x-ray pictures to be taken of myself, thereby greatly increasing my risk of cancer!
Furthermore, people have gotten large weapons and explosives past the TSA screeners and on to aircraft! Terrorists no longer need to board the plane, they can kill more people at the line to board the plane!
So if they are failing on not actually making us safer, does that mean they ARE making us safer even if we don't feel like it?
I traded in a 3 year old car last year with 124,000 miles on the odometer. I very, very rarely fly any more due to the TSA nonsense. I load my junk in the trunk, climb into the driver's seat, and drive 2,500 miles to and 2,500 miles back from an event in Arizona, and then I have events to go to in St. Louis, Indianapolis, La Crosse, Madison, Pittsburgh, and Southern New Jersey. If I do an event in California, I MIGHT fly. I also MIGHT ship my bags by other means, too. Enough of the nonsense of violating the 4th Amendment by having GOVERNMENT agents blanket searching people just because they want to travel on an airplane. The GOVERNMENT can't legally do that, but they ignore the Constitution and do it anyway. Lots of the Constitution is being ignored, more every day, and I for one am not going to cooperate. They can stick it.
Just a couple days ago, a TSA agent up here in the Pacific Northwest was arrested for taking up-skirt photos of women at Sea-Tac airport. Apparently he's been doing it for a while, too.
#DeleteChrome
The other half just hasn't been caught yet.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It's like the Stanford Prison Experiment, only with a lot more experimental groups.
This and the whole situation you have with shootings of blacks should be no surprise. You give one group of people power over another group with insufficient checks and balances, they misbehave and turn into giant douches.
"The TSA's job is to make airline passengers feel safer and, not XXXXXXXXX actually make us safer..."
There, FTFY.
Oh, wait, no proper unions in America, so you can't just all decide as one voice to stop flying until the government disbands the TSA.
Your fault for swallowing the bullshit that unions and union-like professional associations are tools of Socialists / Mobsters rather than free associations of people. A good union simply gives greater voice to those who have insufficient power on their own, and that includes a voice against government.
With something like TSA, a group of unions would simply agree for all its workers to refuse to fly at airports which apply invasive security procedures - and, ideally, unions of airport and airplane workers would agree to strike in any airport in which the government attempted to install TSA agents. It's not about SMASHING CAPITALISM but working with the productive and against the leeches (who are sometimes business owners but just as often governments).
TSA has always been security theatre. The public and the press need to rise up make the politicians actually do their job and not just fake it.
And real security is going to require a lot of changes to things the US holds dear.
that hired them, this isn't surprising
Turnover at TSA is so high that there are very few Bush administration hires left.
The TSA should be replaced with a much much smaller group of enforcement inspectors and all they do is set security guidelines and test airport security. The actual security staff should be hired by the airports themselves, and all TSA does is test that they are meeting standards. (the standards that TSA themselves fail 95% of the time).
Real security is incompatible with mass air transit. Or indeed, free movement of people. The cost of real security is way higher than 10x the cost of the TSA.
The TSA has certifiably reached the Gold Standard of state-sponsored terrorism organization of the U.S. government against its citizens.
The other half of them, I mean.
What's the holdup?
"The TSA's job is to make airline passengers feel safer ...."
Yea, right. I'm going to feel safer with these obvious deviants and criminals groping me, taking dirty pictures of my family, and stealing what they can from my luggage? I simply refuse to fly any more.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I don't care who started it or who hired them.
I just want to know why, with the many problems over so many years, it hasn't been completely dismantled. One would think that with so many politicians keen on privatization this would have been done rather quickly and long ago.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
You shithead, this site hasn't been worth anyone's time in years.
I don't care who started it or who hired them.
I just want to know why, with the many problems over so many years, it hasn't been completely dismantled. One would think that with so many politicians keen on privatization this would have been done rather quickly and long ago.
This is simply what happens when Gov't thinks the people are just cannon fodder.
So when looking objectively at the TSA, it was found that, despite all the expenses, security theater does not improve security. And that it isn't good theater, either.
Why am I not surprised?
You obviously don't understand how a bureaucracy functions. It's function is to grow. Whenever tests are done that find inadequacies the answer is more TSA agents. Bureaucracies never die. They must be killed piecemeal. Completely destroyed and salt sewn in the barren remnants. Often they are just reborn with a new name.
Remember. Politics is 2 words joined together. Poli = many and tics = blood sucking parasites.
Look at them. Just spend a minute or two just watching one of those clowns. I think it's amazing most of them are able to walk upright.
TSA is corrupt from the top of the organization on down.
To put things into perspective TSA costs something like 7-8 billion/yr. The entire fucking FBI's budget is like 8-9 billion/yr.
Will the TSA be gone? Probably never.
For other government employeees it is a good place to get embarassing relatives hired.
For people with a hgh-school fuckoff/thug/bully type mentality it is a home.
The TSA is part of the FBI/NSA/CIA/Homeland Security mega-bureaucracy....
And congress hasn't bothered with reducing their funding.
So, to put this in perspective, let's think about the cost to hire a TSA worker to replace one you fire, vs. the cost to keep a bad one and "counsel" them, and print letters to send/give them to help them straighten up their act and flight right...so to speak.
I'm guessing it's "easier" to just "counsel" the employee, opposed to firing them and going about hiring someone else.
Any HR folks who can check my fuzzy math on this?
Bottom Line: The TSA may have a "values" issue, because in a "normal" security job, misconduct would likely get you fired on the first offense.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Obviosuly TSA lacks some counterpowers. It seems justice and press were not enough, so what can be done?
The TSA was created by an act of Congress.
What about the Clinton Crime Family???
Tell me again why you think government can solve all of our society's problems? I ask because I need a good chuckle today.
... going for the lowest bidder that in term pays the lowest salary to employees that barely qualify to do the work, sometimes.
there are things that you can, and should do in this manner, but the work that TSA does isn't one of them.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
If you want to eliminate the TSA, but feel single-payer health care is a great idea, you're incoherent.
At best.
Because it's THE SAME INCOMPETENT GOVERNMENT. How would that government run a health care system? By doing things like lying about wait times to see a doctor.
"and also cited the case of an Oakland TSA officer who for two years helped smugglers slip more than 220 pounds of marijuana through airport security checkpoints, "
I see no problem with this, other than that they had to smuggle it. The DEA and FDA have already admitted that not only is cannabis harmless and nonaddictive, but has many health benefits and that the government has lied for decades. The guy who assisted the smugglers should be commended for doing what is right, not cited for wrongdoing.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Since the Bush admin and the Republican't party conspired to make the TSA "Civil Service Free" i.e. with no incentive to improve the product or protect the workers rights, why is anyone surprised at wholesale failure to perform?
Capitalists love capitalism, except for the "paying for work" part