These fools are keeping us safe?!?
The TSA’s bungling reached a new low yesterday when a JFK Airport terminal had to be evacuated and hundreds of passengers marched back through security screening all because one dimwitted agent failed to realize his metal detector had been unplugged, sources told The Post.
The stunning error led to hours of delays, two planes called back from the runway and infinite frustration for furious passengers.
“The truth is, this is the failure of the most basic level of diligence,” a law-enforcement source said.
“How can you expect the public to feel confident of the mission of the TSA if they don’t even know if the lights are turned on?”
The chaos at Terminal 7 was caused by screener Alija Abdul Majed, who had manned Lane No. 1 during the morning shift with no idea his metal detector had no juice, sources said.
Amazingly, he failed to realize that alert lights never flashed once as streams of passengers filed through the dead detector, the sources said.
Majed was so clueless that he couldn’t even tell police how long the machine had been shut off or how it happened, the sources said.
“It was simply an unplugged machine — the TSA doing its best,” another source said. Higher-ups at the Transportation Security Administration finally discovered the security boondoggle at 9:44 a.m. — leaving the Port Authority with no choice but to call for a complete evacuation of the international terminal that is home to British Airways, Cathay Pacific, United Airlines and others.
The extraordinary measure meant that two jumbo jets — including a San Francisco-bound United flight — had to return to the gate so passengers could be rescreened at a metal detector that was actually turned on.
People that do the most basic security jobs are often working at the bleeding edge of their competencies. People that are smarter or sharper either don’t stay long or don’t take the jobs to begin with.
In other words, dullards do the jobs that involve feeling up grandmothers and grabbing the crotches of middle-aged white guys (terrorist material if there ever was such a thing). Don’t be surprised when they don’t notice that the machine hasn’t been working for hours.
That is NOT the problem. Problem is that the whole system is run by Government without any incentive to be done better and in a more efficient way. Remove natural incentive from ANY profession and you’ll get decay in the service. Go to Government run health care (where it is run like that) and you’ll have highly educated doctors perform exactly like TSA dullards. Closer to home – DMV, Post Office,… take your pick. It is systematic. Military say you, … you mean that military that is spending 30000$ for toilet seat,… that one?
Privatization and everything run for profit and with capitalistic competition, no regulations – just the free and wild market. Than you’ll fail to find TSA performance anywhere.
Are you at all familiar with the USPS? If you were you would not have the opinion you do.
And if you had to work for the USPS as a letter carrier you’d not last a year. The Post Masters drives the workers to the breaking point. Ever heard the term “going postal”. Now you know why somebody went postal.
As for the rest of your statements, it’s all in the politics. Try taking politics out of congressional spending for the bombs we manufacture.
And after rescreening, how many terrorists did they find?
Funny that the public didn’t say anything either, like lambs.
I wish the age of the steam ship would return.
Don’t complain or they will request additional funds so they can hire another idiot per post per shift just to watch the other idiot to avoid things like this in the future. I’m sure NO ONE in the TSA management thinks this was that persons fault and that they should be fired, assuming they can fire that person. You watch they will literally ask for more money so they can hire more people to avoid these mistakes.
Imagine what other countries think of our airport security. I can’t remember a month or even a week that has gone by where one of these TSA morons made a mistake, was out of line completely, or like in Orlando was just outrageously inappropriate and wrong.
That’s terrible what transpired in Orlando. Inept, all of them. So what’s Congress working on or able to pass.
F’in zombie stuff.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/rob-portman-zombie-hunter-215722676.html
“The chaos at Terminal 7 was caused by screener Alija Abdul Majed, who had manned Lane No. 1 during the morning shift with no idea his metal detector had no juice, sources said.”
This stuff writes itself. The name sounds scary… Abdul, maybe it was all a plan. More FUD.
Abdul found out why the metal detector was not beeping.
It’s rudamentary security only there to give the sheeple the illusion of safety. The added benefit is, like most of the military, a government jobs program .
The proper security, effective, proven and scalable to large transport hubs is the Israeli method of strong and deliberate profiling.
So? Drudge links to a story of a dullard dumping a man’s ashes on the floor. She opened a container that she should not according to their rules have opened then laughed as the guy tried to recover his father’s ashes. Not good behavior in a 10 year old but completely unacceptable in a trained professional who is supposed to know how to deal with the public.
The TSA is not there to make you safer. It is there to make lack witted people think they are safer. At best they might catch someone acting with malice who was a total incompetent. The catch is that it’s pretty widely known that baggage handlers and others could get a bomb on a plane and anyone can walk into a crowded terminal and open fire or set off a bomb attached to their body…Crap you could simply roll a suitcase loaded with HE into a busy terminal and set that off…The only good news is that not a lot of people actually want to do this crap.
TSA==FAIL
hhhmm forgot to plug the metal detector in… i think that is suspicious activity that needs to be reported
i love the question posed in the rss headline, “what’s wrong with these idiots” .. uhm let’s see…. they are idiots? 😛
Should we expect BRILLIANCE from the MINIMUM WAGE operatives ??? That’s what the PROFITEER CONTRACTORS would like to have, but won’t pay for !!! So the Public and the Tax Payers get SCREWED – WHAT ELSE IS NEW ???
You are correct, minimum wage is not enough.
We should be paying people doing this job at least $100,000 a year to get it done correctly.
Ant the supervisors $200,000. Of course we are probably doing that already.
Why not, the bankers were paid much more… and look at how well the economy is performing. The govt’ regulations passed in the Clinton admin is mostly at fault.
Anytime that govt’ to private sector revolving door is used the public gets screwed.
The airports is another example, however this go round a few make big bucks and the rest get squat.
Who to blame, or what to blame.
You expect a government agency to be competent? We should privatize the TSA and bring in Israeli trained contractors to do the job right.
I’ll bet your not brown skinned or Muslim.
Does’nt the machine have a pilot light to showed it is plugged in?
Why did the dummy operating the machine not just plug it in and continue. After all, what percentage of all the millions of passengers that are scanned ave tried to carry a bomb on an airplane. Just about 0.00000%
Guns, knives and nail clippers?
Sorry, I forgot about the nail clippers.
We all should be protected from them.
DonW1234 asks:
“Does’nt the machine have a pilot light to showed it is plugged in?”
Don’t you know, that’s always the _first_ thing to break?
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Ah, Punto Fijo! “Muera La Tirania Y Viva Libertad!” How’s the resale market?
Que the Yakety Sax music….As a frequent traveler, I can easily say that the TSA is a complete failure. Those that run the TSA are incompetent and a majority of TSA employees are not qualified to work at a fast food joint.