The TSA should make its mind. First its agents get all wee-weed up when a passenger refuses to cooperate. Then when a passenger capitulates to their demands to search his person, they want to slap a fine on him.
Some clothes, too. At least that was the case with passenger John Brennan of Portland, Ore., who was stopped at a security checkpoint last year at Portland International Airport.
The Bomb from Sal, Kris, and Charlie’s The Sandwich King of Astoria
It is not clear where he obtained the lethal object. But a JFK passenger’s idle chatter about taking his “bomb” onto the plane caught the attention of a TSA officer on Thursday, leading to the man’s being detained and ultimately missing his flight.
But in what turned out to be an unfortunate comedy of errors, the “bomb” that 29-year-old Jason Michael Cruz was chatting up to a fellow flyer was a sandwich of that name.
Maybe the Transportation Security Administration has ventured into the realm of faith healing. That might explain why a Marine who lost both legs in a roadside bombing was singled out at a TSA checkpoint and told to rise out of his wheelchair and walk.
The Army Times reports that Rep. Duncan Hunter (D-Calif.) is demanding answers from TSA Administrator John Pistole.
It’s the perfect solution for disposing of evidence used in a crime: Carry the weapon through porous and inept TSA security, where it will never be detected, and you might very well escape capture.
A man fleeing authorities at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York didn’t — but no thanks to TSA officers.
Pat-down go boom
Is that a bomb in your pants, or…? The TSA isn’t laughing this morning, not when a major daily newspaper (The New York Post) broke the story of a major security breach at a major airport:
An undercover TSA inspector with an improvised explosive device stuffed in his pants got past two security screenings at Newark Airport — including a pat-down — and was cleared to get on board a commercial flight….
The airport security line for chumps
The rich evidently do live by a different set of rules. Celebrities Kanye West and Kim Kardashian were escorted past a security checkpoint at New York’s Kennedy International Airport on Tuesday, The Washington Post reports.
Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein says the celebrity couple had arrived at the airport on an international flight on Tuesday.
TSA workers acting dumb is nothing new, but a man flying out of New York performed a “stupid passenger trick” of his own — and ended up paying the price. The man, Frank Hannibal, quipped in earshot of a screener that a jar of gourmet peanut butter in his luggage contained an explosive. He was summarily arrested.
There goes half the new applications filed by dirty old (and young) men aspiring to become TSA officers because of the lascivious fringe benefits. Those benefits, at least up until yesterday, included the promise of a chance to ogle “nekkid” women via invasive “nude body” scanners. But on Friday, the agency announced that the odious devices will be phased out by June owing to public pressure over privacy concerns.
How many strikes does it take before the Transportation Security Administration eliminates a bad apple from its ranks? Perhaps the story of baggage inspector Reggie Edwards will provide some light on the topic.
Station WSOC-TV in Charlotte, N.C., reports that Edwards was arrested on Thursday for stealing cash from a passenger’s luggage at Charlotte Douglas Airport.
It is an account by one former TSA employee and, hence, should probably be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism. Nevertheless in light all the abuse the Transportation Security Administration has admitted to, the story is at least worth considering.
At a blog titled Taking Sense Away, the anonymous ex-screener maintains that his fellow officers would routinely yuck it up over the “nude” images of passengers who were required up until recently to submit to the full body scanners. A decision to scrap the invasive machines was made in September, and in most airports they are now a thing of the past.