Sexist, Racist Air Cops Hinder Anti-Terror Efforts

Air marshals perform mock hijacking

Inside sources suggest that it's not naps or kisses that are putting our nation's airspace in danger, but a "toxic environment" created by federal air marshals. More than 85 current or former sky cops in nearly all of the country's field offices have reported distractions from their anti-terror mission, in the form of "intimidation, retaliation, discrimination against women, minorities, the disabled [and] gays." Morale is low, and the agency is also dangerously understaffed.

According to CBS, supervisors of the Federal Air Marshal Service are mainly white, male ex-Secret Service agents, who (perhaps unhappy with the demotion) have "crippled the agency from within." They've created not only a hostile work environment for people who don't look like them, but a slew of lawsuits and Equal Employment Opportunity complaints.

The TSA is currently investigating a "Jeopardy"-style board game with "derogatory nicknames for African-Americans, Hispanics, homosexuals and veterans as a way to mete out discipline and undesirable assignments," reported ProPublica. And in Cincinnati one supervisor demanded a disciplinary investigation against a woman after she filed a sexual harassment lawsuit, and allegedly intimidated witnesses who were testifying on her behalf.

The notorious work environment which deters applicants has led to a second safety concern: understaffing. With so few air marshals on the job, the chances of one crossing paths with an actual terrorist are low. There are approximately 27,000 domestic and international flights every day, reported the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, but only about 3-4,000 are manned by air marshals. Like the Christmas Day underwear attacker—whose flight didn't have a marshal on board—terrorists have good odds of evading the flying force, just by luck of the draw.

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By Sabrina Jaszi in News on February 1, 2010 2:53 PM

Comments [rss]

patjenks

Work for a toxic boss? Report them to http://www.ebosswatch.com

sj

A shot through the skin of a plane will not bring it down nor cause it to break apart in midair. It will make a little hole which will be real loud because you're going 500 mph but it's not going to explosively decompress the plane. The outer skin isn't really structural. You wouldn't want to put your finger in the hole but other than that you'd be all right.

It would be analogous to a shaken up soda can pierced by a needle.

The main risk in shooting a gun on a plane is in hitting an innocent passenger. A more remote risk is of hitting some sort of crucial avionics component behind a wall but that's pretty unlikely and redundant systems are the norm on planes.

Darrell

I guess that no one questions the fundamental problem with guys shooting in a plane filled with passengers. They say that the Air Marshals are given special bullets which are designed so they don't break the hull (which would cause the airplane to crack apart like on LOST), still a well placed shot would bring the plane down, so I'm not really sure how true that is. Anyway, I know we are no safer than we were before 9/11, but hell, we play this whole security game so that someone can feel like they are, even though the number of things which can explode are infinite, making it impossible to prevent acts of terrorism.

If you want to fight terrorism, then you have to focus on a specific threat (there many groups that the government would currently deem as terrorists, but very few would actually do anything to directly harm Americans, most of them would attack secondary structures like an oil processing facility in their own country or something like that. You focus on those who want to come to America and blow something up, and you gather intelligence on those individuals. I think the CIA puts the current number of Al Queda members at 10 thousand now? Clearly, the threat of terrorism, and the amount of security we've set in place is pretty out of scope when we are essentially fighting just 10 thousand guys.

Bernie Madoff-Goetz

Another attempt to stir up outrage. Sorry this one has only resulted in 10 comments in seven hours, Gothamist.

ides_of_march

Maybe they can hire that black TSA woman who was fired for sleeping on the job. She'll suck at this job too but at least the diversity jackals might stop frothing at the mouth for a minute or two.

chuzzlewit

what's wrong with being sexy and racy?

petemac

Even if there were Marshals on board, they wouldn't have prevented the shoe/underwear bombers. They failed because the devices failed. Airlines need better security at the point of entry.

Think2wice

People, have some consideration, they've clearly marked their territory with urine.

Mordicai

I'm shocked. Shocked! Shocked I tell you. Usually this process is so...not rife with racism & incompetence. Or wait, the opposite.

Rocknrope

African-Americans, hispanics, homosexuals, I kinda get it.

But veterans? What's the deal with that?

FrankMartin

Veteran's fall into the first 4 groups, in a big way.

And they can also have other issues that make them the targets of weak minded morons. disabilities due to injury, ptsd. I can see some law enforcement left over who gets a gun and a badge using their bureaucratic authority to make just about anyone's life miserable.

Who among us hasn't been harassed, annoyed etc by a bureaucrat.