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.
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.
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.
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.
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'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.