Sunday, January 25, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

AIRPORT SECURITY: Banned items seized often

Records show thousands of travelers try to carry prohibited things onto planes

Transportation Security Administration screeners Christine Mason, left, and Christina Soto examine prohibited items collected from McCarran International Airport travelers at security checkpoints in a 36-hour period last week. The pocket knives, scissors and other things seen are about one-third of the items collected over a day-and-a-half. Photo by Cariño Casas. Above are a few atypical items passengers have attempted to bring onto flights, including a clock shaped like a time bomb. Photo by Cariño Casas. Click above for enlarged image. Graphic by Mike Johnson. These three bins of scissors, nail clippers, knives and numerous other things banned from commercial flights were collected by federal screeners in just 36 hours at McCarran International Airport. Photo by Cariño Casas.

Thousands of airline travelers moving through Las Vegas appear to be arming themselves for something more sinister than a ride through the friendly skies.

Federal screeners at McCarran International Airport confiscated nearly 4,500 "deadly or dangerous weapons" at security checkpoints in the 18-month period ending Oct. 31, according to federal records obtained by the Review-Journal last week.

On average, Transportation Security Administration workers at the airport collected explosives about every three weeks, a gun every two weeks and a box cutter every day.

The federal agency, created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to strengthen security at the nation's airports, also relieved McCarran travelers of more than 136,000 other items prohibited on flights, including everything from baseball bats and brass knuckles to arrows and ice picks.

"It's not unique to McCarran," said Nico Melendez, a spokesman for the TSA in Los Angeles. "We have found over 8 million prohibited items nationwide since February 2002."

The records, obtained by the newspaper through a Freedom of Information Act request filed in October, cover items seized or surrendered during a 1 1/2-year period beginning in April 2002, when the TSA took over security at McCarran.

They show that scissors were by far the most confiscated item at the nation's eighth-busiest airport. McCarran screeners took 77,497 pairs, or about one pair every 10 minutes.

Knives, including more than 3,800 with blades at least 3 inches in length, were taken at the airport's checkpoints at a rate of about one every 17 minutes.

The documents do not include detailed information about each instance in which items were collected. The records show only totals for each category of item seized or surrendered.

Although more rigid rules about what can be taken on airliners have been in effect for more than two years, travelers utilizing McCarran do not appear to be learning them.

In fact, they seem to be increasingly paying them scant attention.

Between April 2002 and last October, TSA screeners at the airport collected an average of about 1,800 prohibited items each week.

"Right now, we're doing about 2,800 to 2,900 items a week," Jim Blair, federal security director at McCarran, said Friday.

The TSA, which screens passengers at 429 airports across the country, has frequently publicized what items are banned and for years has had a list on its Web site.

Still, agency officials acknowledge the numbers indicate more needs to be done.

"We have a lot of work to do to educate the public," said Melendez, the TSA spokesman.

But the federal government can do little to improve travelers' memories.

"Since we started collecting the numbers in 2002, we have found over 50,000 box cutters," Melendez said. "Why? People will say, `Oh, I forgot that was in there.' Same thing with Swiss Army knives. I had a guy tell me he forgot a .38-caliber gun that weighs 10 pounds in his bag. How could you possibly forget that?"

TSA officials last week were unable to supply specific information on the 24 instances in which passengers at McCarran tried to bring explosives onto the planes.

But agency officials said the vast majority of explosives confiscations nationwide do not appear to be connected to any terrorist plot, and gave two examples from other airports to illustrate this.

"Just last week in Denver, we found an Army soldier on leave from Korea who was carrying an inert land mine," Melendez said. "In Seattle a year ago, we found someone with a stick of dynamite" who did not understand the explosive was banned from flights.

So what happens when people brings screwdrivers, road flares, bull whips and literally tons of other things they should know better than to try to take on airplanes?

Firearms and explosives are seized and turned over to law enforcement.

With less dangerous items, travelers are given three options: give the item to someone who is not traveling, return it to a vehicle or surrender it to the TSA, at which point it becomes property of the federal government.

"More often than not, they just give it to us," said Melendez, the TSA spokesman.

Only a small fraction of the people who tried to go through McCarran's checkpoints with prohibited items faced criminal prosecution, the FBI said last week, including those who entered the checkpoint area with firearms.

"Very few arrests occur unless they can prove some criminal intent," said Special Agent Todd Palmer, a spokesman for the Las Vegas field office of the FBI. "With guns, those are typically guns people have in bags and forget they're in there. They typically relinquish the guns and go on their way."

Of course there are exceptions. Firearms that are always illegal to possess, such as banned assault weapons or guns with the serial number removed, typically lead to arrests.

Even BB guns can lead to a prosecution, the FBI said, citing a recent case at McCarran.

"Some kid thought he was going to be funny and put some plastic BB guns in a bag to see if they would get through, and of course they didn't, and when he got caught, he yukked it up, and he ended up getting prosecuted," Palmer said.

The FBI could not establish criminal intent against another man who tried last year to bring a gun through a McCarran checkpoint just to test whether it would be detected, Palmer said.

But the airport was able to assess the man a civil fine.

Of course, some prohibited items evade detection by the agency's screeners even though the TSA uses everything from metal detectors and X-ray machines to explosive trace detection devices and physical searches to identify threats among passengers and their baggage.

The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, two months ago found that the TSA has not taken measures to evaluate whether its employees are adequately screening passengers.

"Without knowledge of the effectiveness of its programs, TSA and the public have little assurance regarding the level of security provided," Cathleen Berrick, the GAO's director of homeland security and justice, testified Nov. 20 before a House committee.

But local TSA officials say they believe McCarran's screeners are top-notch.

"I think we have very good people here," said Blair, the TSA security chief at McCarran. "We are finding hundreds of items every day."