TSA Agent Busted For Letting Drug Dealer Skip Security

(via vidiot's flickr)

The hits keep coming for the TSA. On Sunday box cutters were found aboard an international flight leaving JFK and then, on Tuesday, a 43-year-old TSA behavioral detection officer named Minnetta Walker was arrested and charged with helping a suspected drug dealer evade security.

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Buffalo, Walker is being charged with conspiring to defraud the United States by interfering with and obstructing security measures, procedures and requirements at Buffalo Niagara International Airport. Also? She's facing charges of "aiding and abetting another individual in entering an aircraft and airport area in violation of federal security requirements." Outside of court yesterday Walker's lawyer insisted his client is innocent. "At this point we are completely denying that she did anything wrong," the lawyer told WKBW.

Walker had been working for the TSA for nine years—as part of her job she was trained to "observe and analyze human behavior" and had unrestricted access around the airport—and has reportedly been under investigation since July 2010 when she came up while investigators were "monitoring the movements and cell phone calls of suspected drug dealers." What exactly they were monitoring is unclear, as the TSA tells us they do "not comment on ongoing investigations."

Also charged yesterday was Derek Frank, of Amherst, who is one of the suspected dealers Walker was helping. He is currently being held pending his next court appearance while Walker is free on her own recognizance.

Meanwhile, these two cases aren't even the only slams on the TSA this week. A hefty investigation of TSA employees in Hawaii is currently underway that implicates at least 27 workers who were not properly screening checked bags for explosives (or anything else). This one the TSA would comment on, telling KITV:

We took immediate action and none of the personnel accused have been conducting screening duties since the allegations were made. TSA is proud to hold our workforce to the highest ethical standards and will not tolerate a deviation from the commitment to carry out our mission to protect the traveling public.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Garth Johnston in News on March 3, 2011 9:55 AM

Comments [rss]

Roger_the_Shrubber

TSA = Thousands Standing Around

goldie000

I bet this type of thing goes on all the time, she just got caught. The temptation of getting easy money will make even honest people, atleast think about doing wrong. It's just the way it is in our society, of gotta have it, just plain greed thats all it is !

sketto

Re: Airport screening.

Apparently, Americans are willing to undergo any invasion or indignity in order to obtain the illusion of a little more security. Real increase in security is marginal. Real loss of rights is significant. But is seems enough people want it this way.

But is anyone really surprised that this kind of shit goes on with the TSA? We get diminished freedom through time-wasting long lines and invasion of privacy. They get to enjoy their power with little evidence of effectiveness. It's all rather predictable, really.

ElizabethConley

So how many people were involuntarily irradiated and/or sexually humiliated on days TSA employees colluded with drug trafficers, permitting them past checkpoints unsearched? What happens when one of the TSA thugs' cronies turns out to be a terrorist rather than just a drug mule?

Given that the TSA employees, a motley bunch of scum, are never searched, how reasonable was it that thousands of innocent citizens had their right to be secure in their persons against unreasonable searches and seizures deliberately violated?

In order to be legal an "administrative" search must be "minimal" and "likely to produce an improvement in security."

Did those irradiations and sexual humiliations produce an improvement in security?

Where those irradiations and sexual humiliations "minimal?"

Tell me again why the TSA's deliberate and continuous violations of citizens' rights to be secure in their person's against unreasonable searches and seizures are still tolerated?

Is it because we're a nation of gutless ninnies?

Is it because our legislators are derilict in their duties to us?

Is it because our courts are slower than molasses in January?

Is it because our President and his cohorts are sleazes?

Why?

aris_a

They aren't bothering to screen your baggage, but they sure are eager to take naked pictures of teenage girls and shove their hands down our pants! Get these filthy molesters out of our airport immediately. Let airlines provide their own security.

dave110

TSA needs to be taken over by the US Military point blank!!!!

dave110

TSA should be taken over by the US Military point blank!!!

dave110

The TSA needs to taken over by the US Military

proudliberal1947

Its not that she did any thing wrong but she is cutting in on the right wing funding machine, and she did not offer them a split. You know how the Anti American republican party is about money.

spiv

Hurry up and unionize them, that way when she gets busted next time we'll have to pay her while she files a grievance.

proudliberal1947

Hell yeah, then she can join the Racist, NAZI, right wing republican and Brain Dead tea baggers in Betraying this country and Lying us into more WARS and Stealing from the TREASURY, just like the SCUM BAG,TURDS in office now, you better know them as COWARDS and TRAITORS called republicans.