So it turns out that Transportation Security Administration screeners not only rob passengers of cash, jewelry and soiled diapers; they also run drugs.
We don’t even need to leave New York state for two examples within the last month. On Aug. 26, Minetta Walker admitted conspiring to get smugglers through checkpoints at Buffalo Niagara International Airport, and now cops have busted a ring ferrying oxycodone between Westchester and Florida that includes three screeners.
What if, next time, it’s terrorists who bribe screeners to look the other way?
Remember: TSA screeners have never caught a terrorist — and they’ve missed a bunch. Federal investigators found last year that “at least 16 individuals later accused of involvement in terrorist plots [had flown] 23 different times through US airports since 2004,” according to CBS News. “Yet none were stopped by TSA … officers working at those airports.”
No doubt they were too busy groping Grandma instead.
If terrorists the TSA misses don’t bring down your next flight, the equipment it damages might. CNN reported in 2008 that one TSA inspector boosted himself into nine “commuter aircraft” by stepping on “sensitive” thermometers that help pilots “gauge the probability of icing” — the bane of these smaller planes.
“We caught it this time,” said a bemused spokesman for the airline’s pilots, “but who knows if this has happened other times … and with other planes that are out there?”
The TSA’s response? It threatened to fine American Airlines for leaving its property open to inspectors.
The agency’s also a public-health menace. Dr. Marybeth Crane, a foot-and-ankle surgeon in Grapevine, Texas, notes that airports’ filthy floors harbor the germs responsible for warts, herpes and staph — including the dreaded MRSA. Yet the TSA has forced billions of passengers over the last decade to shed their shoes and risk contagion.
Ditto for its infamous blue gloves. Screeners probe armpits and groins, often reaching beneath clothing to bare skin — without changing their mitts between victims. Not only does this satisfy the legal definition of “sexual assault” in most states, it also transfers viruses and bacteria.
Just one passenger in the early stages of flu — or something worse — could start an epidemic. Should we tolerate an agency this reckless with our health?
Or one that’s killed a passenger?
Rigoberto Alpizar, a short-term Christian missionary returning to his home in Florida, changed his mind shortly after boarding his connecting flight and tried to disembark past oncoming passengers. Tragically, two TSA air marshals were already aboard; they chased him onto the jetway and shot him five times.
The government didn’t fire the marshals; it didn’t even release their names. So far as we know, they’re still on the job — and perhaps your next flight.
Too many passengers assume that safety and freedom are opposites, that we must sacrifice one to achieve the other. But that’s true only with bureaucracies.
Passwords and anti-virus programs protect our computers; deadbolts and buzzers guard our apartments; “The Club” on steering wheels locks our cars in place.
Private companies invented all these devices. They’d create equally effective, innovative and unobtrusive security for aviation in the TSA’s absence.
Sooner or later, the TSA will kill more passengers. Anyone worried about safety should demand that Congress send it packing — now.
Becky Akers is a freelance writer and historian.