TSA screeners at LAX implicated in meth & coke ring

by Deborah Newell Tornello on April 26, 2012

Today’s episode of  TSA Crime Stories is brought to you–as always, and with nary a trace of irony–by the Department of Homeland Security:

From the Atlantic:

Usually we rail on the TSA for acting dumb and confiscating cupcakes, or making women pump breast milk, or patting down 4-year-olds for hugging their grandmas, or patting down 7-year-old would-be terrorists with cerebral palsy. But today, you can hate on Naral Richardson and his cohorts for being too smart, beating the system and allegedly accepting bribes to let drug couriers through. The Los Angeles Times‘ Victoria Kim reports that authorities have filed trafficking and bribery charges against Richardson and his crew, for half a dozen incidents between January and July 2011 which include the aforementioned eight pounds of meth, and one botched attempt that involved 11 pounds of cocaine. The crew have been taken into custody, and could face life in prison. “While these arrests are a disappointment, TSA is committed to holding our employees to the highest standards,” a TSA official said.

Let’s give it up for the TSA’s “highest standards”! Standards which, as readers of this blog know, translate to “anyone willing to put on the blue gloves and humiliate and dominate innocent Americans.”

If this agency’s employees can be bribed to let drug couriers carrying significant quantities of methamphetamine and cocaine sail through the so-called screening process, they can be bribed to let anyone and anything through. It needs to be said, again: the TSA’s biggest security vulnerabilities are the agents themselves.

We, the People, cannot possibly be expected to trust the employees of the TSA to screen luggage and passengers when so many of them commit theft, assault, abuse, sex crimes, and more on a seemingly daily basis.

We therefore call on President Obama to fire John Pistole; disband this unconstitutional agency; dispose of the naked-scanners; and replace the TSA with a sensible, risk-based program that incorporates metal detectors, bomb-detection dogs and technology, responsible behavioral profiling, and common sense.

(Photo: Flickr Creative Commons/Mykl Roventine)

Tagged as: abuse, Airport, crime, DHS, Drugs, Security, Travel, TSA