NEWARK
— Screeners at Newark Liberty International Airport are properly
executing standard pat-downs of passengers only 16.7 percent of the time
and they identify and take appropriate action on prohibited items in
only a quarter of all cases, according to a secret internal report.
The
revelations are contained in a document, obtained by The Star-Ledger,
titled "PACE Airport Evaluation" and dated June 8. It was compiled by an
undercover team of Transportation Security Administration employees
from other airports who were asked to observe screeners at work at
Newark Liberty.
PACE is an acronym for Presence, Advisements,
Communication and Execution, the four job performance headings that
included a total of 47 individual procedures or skills observed by the
visiting evaluation teams.
To some TSA watchdogs, such poor
performance on standard procedures was startling coming a decade after
the TSA was formed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
Thomas
McDonnell, a Pace Law School professor and author of "The United States,
International Law and the Struggle against Terrorism," said the
findings are unacceptable.
"There’s that often-repeated phrase,
‘We’ve got to get it right all the time,’ " said McDonnell. "When it’s
under 50 percent, under 20 percent, that to me is very shocking."
A
finding of the evaluation that was particularly shocking to McDonnell
and other civil rights advocates was that in no cases — 0 percent — did
screeners properly inform passengers of their right to opt out of a
full-body scan in favor of a pat-down.
"As a civil libertarian, I
am very concerned that people are not being advised what their rights
are," said John F. Banzhaf III, a professor of public interest law at
George Washington Law School.
"There are certainly anecdotal
reports, in addition to this, that people who elected not to go through
the scanner and have elected the pat-down have been patted down much
more aggressively."
The PACE evaluation by out-of-town TSA
employees — nicknamed "secret shoppers" by the screeners being
scrutinized — comes amid a crackdown that has resulted in retraining or
disciplinary action against dozens of Newark screeners and is now
working its way up the local TSA ranks. The crackdown is being led by
Federal Security Director Donald Drummer, who replaced the airport’s
former security chief in April 2011 amid a string of security breaches
and reports of plummeting employee morale.
Asked to comment on
the PACE evaluation, TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein issued a statement
saying: "TSA is an agency that evaluates its workforce constantly with
an eye toward continuous improvement."
"PACE
evaluation is designed to be a ‘snapshot in time’ to assess various
areas of passenger interaction. TSA uses the results as a guide to
educate its workforce on areas where its employees are strong and areas
where it can improve."
Despite
his defense of fliers’ liberties, Banzhaf said he by no means advocates
sacrificing security in the name of liberty. He calls for incorporating
racial and religious characteristics, along with age, sex and other
factors, into calculations of how closely to screen individual fliers,
and, for example, would favor closer scrutiny of young Muslim or Arabic
men than of elderly women.
The PACE report was not all bad. In 17
categories, including removing prohibited items found during physical
searches and exhibiting good listening skills, screeners were observed
carrying out their duties properly 100 percent of the time.
The
PACE evaluation process at Newark began several months ago, and has
involved at least three visits by PACE teams, according to TSA employees
in Newark. In some cases, the team members position themselves
discretely at checkpoints in order to observe a particular screener
performing the same function over and over on a number of passengers. At
other times, the evaluator will pass through the checkpoint as if en
route to a flight, in order to undergo the various screening procedures
himself.
While Newark Liberty has been undergoing a staffwide
shakeup over the past year resulting directly from a string of repeated
and sometimes high-profile security breaches, TSA officials say PACE
evaluations are carried out at the country’s largest airports not
necessarily to address chronic security-related problems, but rather to
ensure standardization of procedures nationwide. Officials say the
evaluations are not meant to gauge screeners’ performance in extreme
situations and, for example, the prohibited items that evaluators
attempt to carry through checkpoints include oversized liquid containers
and gels not properly stored in so-called 3-1-1 bags — not guns or
bombs.
Mecca Scott, a former Newark screener who is now a
national organizer with the Association of Federal Government Employees,
the union representing 44,000 screeners, said scrutiny comes with the
territory.
"They’re tested on a regular basis locally, so it’s not something they’re not used to," Scott said.
Stacy
Bodtmann, another AFGE union official who is still a screener in
Newark, said the evaluation points to the need for more training.
"I’m not blaming everything on training," Bodtmann said. "I just feel that Newark doesn’t get the amount of hours it should."
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