The Air Marshal Association says the Transportation Security Administration lacks law enforcement culture and the marshals want to do more police work in airports.
By Joe Davidson, The Washington PostPassengers line up to be screened by TSA at Love Field Airport in Dallas. Not only do these law enforcement officers want to do more on-the-ground police work, they also want a divorce from their organizational home, the Transportation Security Administration.
The Federal Air Marshal Service began in 1962 to combat air hijacking and greatly expanded after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, in which airliners were hijacked midflight. For security reasons, TSA does not release the number of marshals, who operate nationally and on certain foreign flights. He opposes taking FAMs out of TSA, he said by email, because “TSA is tasked with securing aviation based on current intelligence and deploys a variety of security measures to do so. FAMs are one layer of security, and they are most effective and provide the most value when deployed in coordination with TSA’s other layers of security.”
“We are not the primary call for TSA for law enforcement incidents,” he complained, “which we think is pretty ridiculous.” Local police respond to security checkpoint incidents, for example, “but the local police can only enforce laws up to the local statute. They let things go by like currency and monetary reporting violations.”
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