Report: Racial profiling is rampant at Boston airport, TSA officers say
In this Thursday, Aug. 10, 2006 file photo, a Massachusetts state trooper keeps watch over travelers making their way through Logan International Airport in Boston. / File,AP Photo/Elise Amendola
(CBS/AP) NEW YORK - Transportation Security Administration officers at Boston's Logan International Airport are alleging that a program intended to help flag possible terrorists based on passengers' mannerisms has led to rampant racial profiling, a newspaper reported Saturday.
The New York Times reported on its website that in interviews and internal complaints it has obtained, more than 30 officers involved in the "behavior detection" program at Logan contend that the operation targets not only Middle Easterners, but also passengers who fit certain profiles — such as Hispanics traveling to Miami, or blacks wearing baseball caps backward.
"They just pull aside anyone who they don't like the way they look -- if they are black and have expensive clothes or jewelry, or if they are Hispanic," one white officer told the Times.
The TSA told the newspaper on Friday that it is investigating the officers' claims. At a meeting last month with the agency, officers provided written complaints, some of them anonymous, from 32 officers.
The officers said their co-workers were increasingly targeting minorities, believing the stops would lead to the discovery of drugs, outstanding arrest warrants and immigration problems, in response to pressure from managers who wanted high numbers of stops, searches and criminal referrals, The Times reported.
"The behavior detection program is no longer a behavior-based program, but it is a racial profiling program," one officer wrote in an anonymous complaint The Times obtained.
The program, which has been billed as a model for other airports across the country, is intended to allow officers to stop, search and question passengers who seem suspicious. Specially trained "assessors" observe security lines for unusual activity and speak individually with each passenger, looking for inconsistencies in the passenger's responses to questions and behavior such as avoiding eye contact, fidgeting or sweating.
Passengers considered suspicious can be taken aside for more intensive questioning.
At least one passenger has filed a formal complaint with the TSA. Kenneth Boatner, a black psychologist and educational consultant who was traveling to Atlanta on business last month, said he was detained for nearly half an hour as agents examined his belongings, including his checkbook and his patients' clinical notes.
In an interview with The Times, Boatner said he felt humiliated, and that the officers never explained why they were singling him out, but he suspected it was because of his race and attire. He was wearing sweat pants, a white T-shirt and high-top sneakers.
"I had never been subjected to anything like that," Boatner said.
The TSA said the program at Logan "in no way encourages or tolerates profiling," and that passengers cannot be subjected to behavior assessments based on their nationality, race, ethnicity or religion.
"If any of these claims prove accurate, we will take immediate and decisive action to ensure there are consequences to such activity," the agency said in a statement.
The TSA said it did not compile information on passengers' race or ethnicity and could not provide a breakdown of passengers who may have been stopped on either basis through the program.
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There is plenty of evidence, including these three profiling incidents and the mass firings of screeners in Ft. Myers, Hawaii and Ft Lauderdale, that much of TSA management has become populated with perverse and corrupt people and no one is a better witness to this than the TSA workers who expose these managers. If this is not stopped at this point the decent screeners who dislike being ordered to grope and humiliate passengers needlessly will quit and the thugs managing the agency will fill their ranks with abusive bullies. At that point security will become unbearable and America will be in very bad place.
The behavior detection program has been shown to be hocus-pocus used to conceal a drug interdiction scheme. Is anyone really stupid enough to believe that TSA can train a fast food worker to read minds in six weeks?
This is the third major incident in this program in a year involving racial profiling and harassment, illegal interrogations and unlawful searches and there have been others that received less exposure. TSA investigated themselves in the incidents in Newark and Hawaii and found they were innocent. No one was fired or prosecuted for their illegal searches and harassment of innocent people. What a surprise.
Where does this stupidity stop?
In the past two months 35 TSA workers fired or arrested and 66 more disciplined for misconduct on the job. A known pedophile, Thomas Harkins, was exposed in May but remains employed as a TSA Supervisor in Philadelphia. There were a total of 97 TSA workers arrested in the last 20 months including 12 arrested for child sex crimes, over 26 for theft, 12 for smuggling contraband through security and one for murder.
This is precisely the problem with TSA, no accountability when they exceed their authority and those in management are never fired. Even police are subject to prosecution by victims. Not so for TSA employees and this must change.
The TSA management and screeners responsible for this illegal activity should be prosecuted and the agency sued for billions.
TSA needs to be held to the same standards of accountability as other agencies and those responsible for this excessive overreach and corruption prosecuted by the next Congress.
Tiocfaidh ar la
Isn't there some kind of difference between a few crazy fools, killing for recognition, and a complete religious ideology that condones and even supports this kind of killing, in the name of the almighty Allah????
And Muslim is not a Nationality such as Swedes, it is a religion. There are Swedish Muslims, American Muslims, Turkish Muslims, Arabic Muslims, etc.
Most are no different than any other group of people who want to live in peace, have shelter, food, and the other necessities of life.
I personally know and interact with Muslims who are wonderful, loving and kind people. I have no interest in their religion, however, I respect them for who they are.
My advice to bigots like you is to get to know some Muslims and perhaps you will see how wrong you are. I have interacted with every race, religion, and ethnicity you can think of and have not found anyone of them to be any better or worse than any of them.
It is an individual thing; there are good and bad in every race, religion, and ethnicity, and that is the reality of our world.
And if I were a member of these categories, I wouldn't mind at all because I'd want to be safe, too.
What does smuggling drugs or anything else have to do with airline safety?
Case and point..
..profling based upon clothing and race is WRONG period..especially if two doctors(one anglo saxon and another is not) are dressed the same at the airport and are both wearing sweat pants and a white tea shirt..and the only one whose profiled is the non anglo-saxon- person of color..
..we can try to PRETEND..that profiling is NOT a issue in AMERICA..and blame others for whining who have been profiled based upon clothing & race..so until it happens to YOU..you have no idea what being PROFILED based upon race and other adjectives feels like..
..there's a friend of mine..who is a house hold name .. drives a 2013 BMW(yea you can purchased).. a cop was following him for about a mile and then pulled him over.. the cop never said why he stopped him for.. the cop ask for the driver's license and insurance confirmation papers.. ran the information and then the cop asked one other question.."do you have a bill of sales for this vehicle?"
..my friend answer the cop.. you see the vehicle is REGISTERED to me and I have insurance and a valid License I don't need to present a bill of sale....which answers your QUESTION..now what was I pulled over for? The cop never stated why..
The cop told my friend you are free to go..my friend filed a compliant against the officer.. he audio taped the conversation between he and the cop..and the cop didn't know it..with SMART VEHICLES you have the option..audio and video options are becoming standard with smart vehicles.. this is why Cops nowaways HATE cell phones when they acost someone which can show how cops over step their authorities..and LIE about it later and blame the alleged offender..
You're as full of crap here as you are on the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin stories.
It kind of sounds like you have something against white, Anglo-Saxons.
Police base suspicions on statistics far more than they do race. It's not their fault that statistics may be affected more by one race or another.
Have a nice day, young man.