Dateline: Las Vegas March 2, 2006
Singer, dancer and American Idol celebrity, Paula Abdul, found herself mobbed by a group of fans at McCarran International Airport. Ms. Abdul was apparently late while trying to catch a flight to Burbank. A Southwest Airline official helped Abdul through a backdoor and bypassed TSA security along the way.
The panic by these low-wattage TSA morons quickly kicked in as they developed a plan to save us all from Paula Abdul. Once the plane arrived in Burbank the passengers were detained, arrested or kidnapped by TSA officials until they conducted a retroactive screening of the entire planeload of passengers. My God! Are we that screwed up that we allow for this kind of foolishness by government?
Will we now see the threatening and dangerous Paula Abdul’s name on the Terrorist No Fly List over this frightening security breech?
Comments
They have you by the balls at the begining of your trip but not at the end! I'd simply walk right through the TSA ass holes! They don't have the power of arrest!
The "morons" were the Southwest Airlines employees who breached security, then were dumb enough to tell TSA about it.
The Burbank TSA officers who were told a non-screened plane was on its way to them had to take some kind of action. I probably would have had the pax deplane on the tarmac and then bused them and their bags to the front curb of the terminal, thus obviating the need to re-screen them. But I've never been to Burbank and I don't know the resources TSA had to work with.
I tend to agree that minutely screening pax for handheld weapons is a misguided focus of our security efforts - the resources would be better spent coming up with better ways to sniff for explosives, for example. But as long as we are going to search everybody, let's search EVERYBODY.
And given the number of musician-involved shootings, we probably should profile anyone involved in the entertainment industry . . . .
JM
The TSA should be disbanded. I’m sorry I can't respect any person that would accept employment at the TSA.
There was NO need to re-screen anyone because Paul Abdul somehow slipped through the cracks. That Abdul incident is a really good example of how the low-wattage morons working for the TSA lack basic common sense.
But given that pax are screened, an unscreened person entering the screened area contaminates it.
Given that the Burbank TSA guys (who may have signed up for the job and given up other potential employment before they fully understood what TSA was all about) had to keep their jobs, they could not ignore Abdul's plane and just let it land and disgorge a host of unscreened pax into the system.
Their solution probably could have been tweaked, but they were forced into reaction by Southwest's action. As an airline that benefits financially from having its security screening 'outsourced' to TSA, Southwest really needs to be beaten about the head and shoulders for violating TSA's procedures.
CPD enforces drug laws that violate the right to privacy, and gun laws that violate the 2nd Amendment. I assume you still "respect any person that would accept employment at" CPD.
Again, I agree with you on the futility of pax screening. But sometimes the best way to get rid of a bad law is to enforce it . . . .
JM
Common sense and prudence with the end goal of protecting the community from real rather than imagined threats is what being a cop is all about.
Cops can set their priorities to deal with crimes in the order of their impact on the citizens on their beats.
The victimless crimes you described generally don’t get the attention when there’s serious crimes’ happening that can destroy or change lives.
The TSA is a black and white, paper driven agency only too happy to destroy the reputation and employment of anyone with a valid concealed weapons permit that forgot he or she had a gun in their briefcase as they were being screened.
Southwest Airlines personnel did nothing that in anyway impacted the safety of passengers by helping Paula Abdul make her flight under the circumstances. That Southwest worker used what the TSA and their monkeys lack, common sense and discretion.
He or she never knew what it was like to travel before they existed. Frankly I fear people with this mentality far more than I do airline hijackers
I guess a bad response is better than no response to the TSA.
Before they got off, they had to be screened just like when you come from the street (non-sterile) into the airside (sterile) part of the airport. Unless you can land the plane on the street and have people get off on the landside of the airport, I believe this was the correct thing to do.
Being a celebrity should have no significance on whether they should be immune to laws and regulations.
Not all TSA employees are morons, CPD has a fair number of idiots as well....geeez giving grandma a ticket for forgeting to signal, why don't they do some real police work....
Granted, there are some dim bulbs working for TSA, but the fact of the matter is that the rank-and-file screeners don't make the policies; they can only carry out the procedures handed down by headquarters. Anecdotal evidence suggests that there are far more "low-wattage TSA morons" in management and senior executive positions than there are working at the checkpoints.
Mark Arsenault
Webmaster, Admin & Head Janitor
Screeners Central
www.tsa-screeners.com
The attitude displayed by of some of the screeners while checking my firearms and video equipment has not won me over as a friend. Add to it that there has been an epidemic of theft from baggage committed by a small minority of screeners and hatred becomes part of the equation and screeners become the enemy.
For me this far more an issue of Liberty than anything else. The rank and file screeners are at the mercy of their indoctrination by those at the top of their food chain. The politicians and their patronage hacks making policy are a far larger problem than any single screener.
I asked Paul if he would fling the same insults at CPD that he flung at TSA, because I think neither group deserves them - at least at the rank-and-file level.
JM
wouldnt someone like Abdul, or a little old white lady be the perfect "mule" to carry knives/bombs/etc? Grab a son/daughter/granddaughter, send her a clip of them with their mouth taped up, and instructions to pick up a pkg, or else...
March 08, 2006 11:15 AM
Please! Put down you crack pipe! That stuff will melt you brain! Too bad that already started to happen....