THE Transportation Security Administration, the bureaucracy in charge of hassling passengers at airport checkpoints, is dressing its screeners in blue shirts and badges that mimic police uniforms.
This has real cops up in arms. Capt. Walter May, head of Cleveland’s chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, told The Plain Dealer: “Travelers need to know who the real police are for safety reasons . . . [and] during emergencies.”
But the TSA doesn’t listen to cops.
Indeed, it’s hoping the new look “will convey authority” because “some of our officers aren’t respected.”
Gee, TSA agents get no respect? Most passengers could tell the agency that this has nothing to do with clothes and everything to do with grown adults acting as if water bottles will blow up planes.
Of course, the TSA doesn’t listen to passengers, either.
The shirts and badges debut at an interesting point in the agency’s history. It recently installed body scanners at JFK – machines that strip victims virtually. Anyone who steps into the scanner’s portal appears naked on its monitor.
The TSA claims that leering at us in our birthday suits lets screeners “detect” contraband “quickly, unobtrusively and without physical contact.” It calls the technology “a promising alternative to the physical pat-down.”
Yet cooperating with this striptease doesn’t mean you won’t also get groped. Screeners still conduct a hands-on investigation of any “anomalies” a scan turns up – especially humiliating to passengers with body jewelry, implants or a prosthesis.
But the agency assures us that its contraptions “enhance security without diminishing the personal privacy of passengers.” Right. People pay good money for porn precisely because such explicit images “diminish personal privacy.”
Millimeter-wave scanners now lurk at almost a dozen airports nationwide for use on passengers “selected” for the dreaded “secondary screening.” But the agency plans to ramp that up to all airports and all 2 million daily passengers.
In other words, the TSA will strip you every time you zip from LGA to LAX – or even to Albany.
It pretends that this is what it takes to ferret out the terrorists crowding airports these days – though no screener anywhere has caught a single one in the TSA’s six-year career.
Hence, the uniforms: If the agency’s employees are ogling naked people all day, it had better dress them like cops, lest passengers mistake them for Peeping Toms.
Another TSA defense: The new uniforms “reflect the seriousness of screeners’ duties.” Maybe Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt should give badges and blue shirts a try.
To soothe cops, TSA Deputy Administrator Gale Rossides promises that the agency (probably) won’t ever entrust screeners with actual police powers: “We coupled the badges with the communications training to make it clear to our officers that they’re there to facilitate our passengers.”
Now there’s news: The TSA “facilitates passengers.” How, exactly?
Actually, given that “enhanced security” means seeing us naked, it’s probably better not to know.
Becky Akers is writing a book about the TSA.