TSA acknowledges financial stress of shutdown is forcing officers to stay home
washingtonpost.com
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She said her fellow officers are “out there working, they’re putting their lives on the line. We took that oath when we got hired here, and we’re not even getting what we deserve.”
I'd say their risk profile is limited to someone attacking the checkpoint explosively, which has not happened.
Nobody goes to rob the till or start a knife fight at the airport.
There's too many people for anything short of large scale violent crime, which is pretty rare.
People in the police, army, and similar forces (whether TSA officers are considered as such is a political point) are often spoken about in similar terms regardless of how dangerous their jobs actually are (e.g. an Army chef based in the US may be revered just as much for putting their 'life on the line' as someone running into Helmand because it's about their service to the country rather than the absolute risk).
I never hear people talk about how the postal service mail carriers “put their lives on the line” although they are probably at an increased over TSA because of dog attacks.
Meanwhile the statistic for police in the US in 2013 was 11.1/100,000 [2], about 37 times as dangerous, or 18.3/100,000 for firefighters [3], or about 62 times as dangerous.
That's not the whole picture though, because it doesn't take into account hours worked, or injury (probably also higher for firefighters and police).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Security_Admini... [2] https://fee.org/articles/by-the-numbers-how-dangerous-is-it-... [3] https://www.firehouse.com/safety-health/news/10535644/firefi...
But yeah, it seems like an unnecessary risk for police to go to the driver's side. I always try to give them space, but quite a few drivers don't.
Also, I'm a truck driver, on the road all day every day, and cops are mostly on the passenger side these days. Anecdata.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/careers/2018/01/09/work...
Firefighters and Security guards are not in top 25.
[0]https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fool.com/amp/investing/gene...
Being on base in the USA is probably pretty safe, with a healthier than average population.
For what is pays and the educational requirements policing is a very safe job.
We also know pre-9/11 how common it was (non-existent).
We also know that they consistently fail audits. Though they've gotten better! Most recently they only failed ~75% of the time at detecting things auditors were trying to smuggle in, instead of the prior 95%!
So, yeah, by itself it doesn't. But we have enough data to make a pretty solid eval.
If they see a country isn't up to their standard, I think they either show up to implement it for flights headed to the US or at least consult with the nation.
> The TSA has never found a bomb.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't understand how that supports your statement.
I can't believe he'd be dumb enough to try to bring this on an airplane. It'd make way more sense to ship them to w/e destination.
I've heard that the reason we haven't had a major terrorist attack in the US since 9/11 was because of vigilance of the public. If people get lazy and start trusting that the TSA will competently do their job, we're likely to have another. I think it's because the TSA is pretty bad at their jobs that we haven't had anything major attack.
A centralized regulating agency for transportation security makes sense, but heres what I don't get: what was the argument for also creating/hiring a literal army of guards to replace the private force that existed before? It seems unprecedented considering everything else in the post-Reagan political ideology.
It was a massive and invasive expansion of Federal policing power, and it seemingly comes under no real scrutiny or opposition (beyond everyone completely hating it)
Given that, I don't see any reason they can't just be standards or policies that private security would adhere to. I'm sure there's a boondoggle story behind it, but I thought some airports had tried replacing TSA with middling success?
SFO is still private. Their version of security is not the TSA, they are Covenant Aviation Security. [0]
If it was truly about security, then it would just be a regulatory and enforcement agency like the EPA. But nope, gotta get those dollars!
Yeah right, my heros.
That said, the airport is a TSA run security theater: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater. They know this, of course, but must act otherwise.
Bottom line is the TSA doesn't provide the value it costs.
I really wish we could just abolish the TSA and let the airlines and their insurance work it out with the airports. Things were way better before 9/11 when I didn't feel like a criminal when I need to ride on an airplane.
(Also, shutdowns are becoming increasingly frequent. If this continues, maybe one day it won't come out of the shutdown ...)
TSA?? They're not doing anything of value, for the most part. Three quarters of them could probably be let go. We're not losing much here.
According to Webster: "a condition in which one lacks liberty especially to determine one's course of action or way of life"
This is false. They have an option (leave) and can execute on it.
I think the American people have been lied to enough.
Disingenuous is taking this too far. They're paid in arrears, so the fact they've missed a paycheck means they've already done work which ought to have resulted in pay. They are currently without pay for labor they've contributed within the appropriate time-frame.
I was saying, regardless of whatever position I might take in a thought experiment, the US government has acted irrationally and violated an implicitly (and often explicitly) defined contract within our society: I give you my labor power, you give me cash. It currently stands that many government workers are without pay because that contract was violated and they have yet to be paid for their labor, so WP saying they are without pay is a valid statement.
In the meantime they need to make their rent and mortgage and car and credit card payments and their creditors aren't going to accept an IOU. So for the time being, this is exactly like working without pay.
Edit: To adapt Keynes: the market for payday loans can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
Of course, in the Soviet Union, you didn't have rent and mortgage payments to make, bread and vodka was provided through rations, and during the collapse, nobody cared too much if you looted your workplace of anything that wasn't nailed down, or couldn't be pried off, so society kind of stumbled along, despite the lack of wages.
What I really don't understand is why this isn't being treated like the recurring, front-page, every-headline, national emergency that this is.
For bonus points: These employees are forbidden, by law, to do a strike, or perform a work stoppage, or a work slowdown. If CBP actually carried one out, though, this 'crisis' would be resolved in under 24 hours, as every single company in the United States that had an international supply chain would be screaming at the White House to get this problem fixed.