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TSA Agent Arrested at LAX

So then why would we need to increase the pay?
Because good pay in nameless small southern town does not equal good pay that will attract quality staff in New York City or Los Angeles. Thus, we're getting the least qualified people where we need the MOST qualified people.

That's how the federal system tends to work. Or, rather, not work.
 
We've all been through the airports, we've seen who the TSA agents are. These aren't people who went to college and studied hard to learn the law and court systems so that they can become police officers or FBI agents. I'm not really surprised that they're drug taking thugs. And these are the people responsible for our "safety".

*Cough* You know not ALL TSA agents are like that *Cough*

*COUGH*

But yeah...anyways...I can easily give you a reason why yes, many of those that work for the TSA aren’t exactly the beacons of our society.

1. Pay is one of it. In some places its likely not that bad of pay. In Northern VA you’re likely making $24k a year as a full time job. Honestly, up here, barely enough to live decently on your own if you plan on having anything under an hour commute. Especially if you’re having to pay off student loans while doing it
2. Work Conditions. This is my own experience having worked at a very large Airport, on the baggage side. Horrible, inflexible hours, with almost a guarantee that you’re getting at least one if not two weekend days unless you’re lucky or been there a very long time. 90-100+ degree basements and warehouses filled with enough fumes and dirt in the air that you can literally feel a layer of it on your skin when you’re done. Immediate management with little actual knowledge of “managing” at all.
3. Upward mobility. As far as screeners go there’s not much movement. You have to wait 2 years to get your first potential grade increase. After that there’s little movement in pay/position available unless you’re able to get into a Lead or Supervisory position. Those are few and far between, generally filled to the brim at this point and opened only if one of them actually leaves the position. I knew people that had been there for 5 years that had seen one increase in position/pay.
4. Customers. Many people seem to hate the TSA. Many treat each employee as if they personally went to Bush and said “You know what’d be a great idea? Lets have everyone take their shoes off and have their bags searched.”
5. No care about a college degree. A guy with a GED is going to come into a big airports TSA making the same thing as a guy that got hired with a college degree, which is a huge morale killer for someone with a degree. Doubly so when you discover that you don’t choose if you do baggage or screening, its random depending on what training class you are in. So if you went into TSA hoping for at least some kind of basic entry level security type experience working the scanning lanes you could end up being someone doing baggage which is essentially just physical labor with a technological twist.
6. Constant turnover. Add all this together and you get another big issue. People are constantly quicking, which leads to constantly having to get new people into it. So you have few long lasting people with experience, lots of people with little experience, and lax standards so as to be able to hire people quick enough.

Mind you, all this is about the big airports.

Because of those above your TSA agents are often times going to be high school degree people needing a job cause they’re not going to college/going to community college, lower class people trying to find a job with benefits, a lot of ex military guys who come back and don’t have many options open, people who needed a second job for their family, and fresh out of college people seeking a foot in the door to the federal government.

I wouldn’t say you have a “thuggish” contingent of TSA members. I didn’t know many “thug” types honestly. I would say though that yes, admittedly, on the whole you’re not getting the best and the brightest but I also wouldn’t say that you’re getting the dredges of society either. There are a number of intelligent people within the TSO ranks, without a doubt. More than some may believe. I would say its higher standards than your average McDonalds or mall store, but yes you’re not getting a law firm level of intellect. Unfortunantly though the state of how things are at the big airports likely causes your best TSO’s to be the ones most likely to try and get out of the airport ASAP.


And people want to start in on profiling. Can you imagine that one.

Now if we think at the base of profiling in general. Someone walks around observing people, their body language and patterns and then can match that with set conditions typical of certain behaviors. Angry people will do these three things, people looking to avoid authority will do these 4 things, blah blah blah. But to be a profiler, like an actual one, you have to have a good understanding of human behavior and psychology. You have to have a lot of knowledge about what visible signs mean what and to know the average characteristics of certain groups and behaviors. Then think how many you'd need per airport, how many airports there are in the US. You think we're going to hire the people capable of proper profiling and observation? Or are we just going to pull another group of thugs off the street, give them a 3 hour seminar a plastic badge and send them on their way?

I know for sure which one seems more damned likely.

They actually have the above thing. And I can assure you the hiring process for them is far more stringent, detailed, and of a higher standard than the hiring of a standard base tso
 
I agree. You can't just raise pay, you've got to raise hiring standards and you've got to be smarter about how you provide airport security so that you're not asking smart people to do mindless work.

Which is why the lynchpin of airport security has to shift from mindless customer service to smarter procedure.

This sounds good, but I don't see how it will ever actually happen in practice. I've not yet heard a proposal for a screening system that still didn't in large part rest on routine physical and visual screenings. By the nature of that work, it's not that easy to make it "smarter" - there are still going to be huge numbers of people whose job it is to stand there and get yelled at, to direct idiot travelers through clearly marked lines, and to yell "step forward" when someone finishes walking through the metal detector.

Because good pay in nameless small southern town does not equal good pay that will attract quality staff in New York City or Los Angeles. Thus, we're getting the least qualified people where we need the MOST qualified people.

That's how the federal system tends to work. Or, rather, not work.

I would agree that the COLA adjustments are inadequate for more expensive cities, but as you note, this is a problem with the entire federal system. The idea that federal employees as a whole are underpaid is absolutely absurd.
 
I this point I'd say that trying to get airtight security in the U.S. is a pipe-dream. Any solution that doesn't start with a top to bottom gutting of the TSA is unlikely to accomplish anything useful. However, would take a complete mentality shift away from security theater, and the political will to upset many powerful bureaucrats. Honestly, I think we should simply focus on simple things that minimize the hassle to air travelers. Put them through a metal detector, x-ray the luggage, maybe a quick pass through a full body scanner and call it good enough. That is going to be just as effective as the time and money wasting crap we have today, and come at considerably lower cost. The reinforced cockpit door and non-compliant passenger is the only real security change since 9/11. Its time to stopped being ruled by fear and accept the risk with the same attitude we do towards homicide or automobile accidents.
 
I would agree that the COLA adjustments are inadequate for more expensive cities, but as you note, this is a problem with the entire federal system. The idea that federal employees as a whole are underpaid is absolutely absurd.

I've never made the claim that federal employees, as a whole, are underpaid. I can think of a couple of dozen that I've worked with personally who are massively overpaid.
 
Honestly, I think we should simply focus on simple things that minimize the hassle to air travelers. Put them through a metal detector, x-ray the luggage, maybe a quick pass through a full body scanner and call it good enough.

We also should have warning bells that are pinged by passengers who meet specific criteria: one-way tickets, paying cash, zero luggage...

That should set off some kind of red flag for "special screening."
 
To be brutally honest, the conservatives didn't want to pony up the money to hire college graduates, did they?

I know, right?

Many TSA Agents look to be smart and hard-working security professionals. But there's always one or two at each check point that make you wonder--what did they do before working for the TSA?

How does their salary compare to other law enforcement?

TSA at LAX is backed up by LAPD, DEA, ATF, and INS Agents -- a special task force that's been around for years.
 
Many TSA Agents look to be smart and hard-working security professionals. But there's always one or two at each check point that make you wonder--what did they do before working for the TSA?

The ones in Atlanta have all the charm and poise of your average fast food worker.
 
I don't think that this is so much an indictment of the TSA as it is a reminder that the government is made up of perfect strangers -- oftentimes they are well-meaning strangers who do what they are supposed to do and believe in what they are doing, but they are strangers nevertheless.

You should always be very cautious about giving unto the government any authority which you do not wish a perfect stranger to have over you.

What was so perfect about that guy? Or anyone in government?
 
To be brutally honest, neither side wants to pony up the money to hire people into vitally important positions at a reasonable rate of pay.

The number of military families on food stamps is evidence of that.

If it wasn't a reasonable rate of pay, why did the man enlist?

If he enlisted before he was married, why did he not refrain from marriage until he could afford it?

If TSA agents don't think they're paid enough, they're perfectly free to seek other employment.

It doesn't take a college degree to sniff shoes and look at TV all day.
 
Oh, I dunno.

If in order to pay my bills I had to take a job handling hundreds if not thousands of agitated travelers every day, I'd probably end up doing drugs too.

Especially if I took my job seriously and tried to treat everyone with respect.

After a certain point, it's blow off some steam or loose your shiznit, you.

That's no excuse at all.
 
Yes, yes they did. They had a fast track system. It was a company, you paid a fee, they did background checks, took a bunch of your biometric data blah blah blah. When you went to the airport, you could use the card or whatever it was and basically by-pass the security line. Company went under because no one wanted the service. Actually there were a few like Clear or Flo, but I don't think any of those companies are around anymore.

So when al queda learns of this and presents some clean young stooges to get the fast track pass, and coordinates another series of air strikes, what then?
 
So when al queda learns of this and presents some clean young stooges to get the fast track pass, and coordinates another series of air strikes, what then?

Run for your lives, the sky is falling!

I think I said that I don't believe the companies are in existence anymore. Mostly due to market forces.
 
I'm a veryy worried about this stuation when when people with only GEDs can pull over at random. There needs to be something for these people to further their understanding beyond having authority and or a paycheck.


I would like to see an education system for these people.
 
We also should have warning bells that are pinged by passengers who meet specific criteria: one-way tickets, paying cash, zero luggage...

As you may have missed Arcana XV mentioning in another thread, there are many parts of the world where paying cash for a ticket is standard practice or at the very least commonly done.

I also fail to see why one-way tickets and not bringing luggage should single you out for punishment. What about commuter flyers, or people with a variable schedule?
 
If it wasn't a reasonable rate of pay, why did the man enlist?

If he enlisted before he was married, why did he not refrain from marriage until he could afford it?[/QUOTE]

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Oh man, I'm not even going to bother.

If TSA agents don't think they're paid enough, they're perfectly free to seek other employment.

It doesn't take a college degree to sniff shoes and look at TV all day.

I'm not talking about whether or not TSA agents are paid fairly, I'm saying that we get what we pay for.
 
If they really want to get serious about airport safety, then they need to ditch TSA and man these stations with armed, uniformed Border Patrol agents. After all, airports are just like border crossings.

Do you think Border Patrol Agents will be allowed to do their jobs, since they are hamstrung guarding the border between the US and Mexico?
 
I'm a veryy worried about this stuation when when people with only GEDs can pull over at random. There needs to be something for these people to further their understanding beyond having authority and or a paycheck.


I would like to see an education system for these people.

You get what you pay for.

As I've been saying.
 
Link


Do we need anymore proof that these morons deserve to us full body scanners? They have some meglamaniacs in their mist.

The tool currently in line to be the director of TSA is felon. I agree. There is some cancer that needs to be trimmed.

Obama really dropped the ball in allowing such an individual to be considered for such a position.
 
Oh man, I'm not even going to bother.


then don't.

People who can't answer perfectly reasonable questions about their positions don't understand their positions.


I'm not talking about whether or not TSA agents are paid fairly, I'm saying that we get what we pay for.

We're paying for people to snoop luggage and feel people up.

Why should that come with a high price tag?
 
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