Arrested TSA Employee Former NY TSA agent faces prison in drug casen - WSJ

Minetta Walker found guilty.

http://online.wsj.com/article/AP899b377079854407851099f24b844fb4.html

 

Any bets she gets a reduced sentence and community service?

 

Are you thinking the community service as 'volunteer' at the airport assisting passengers through the security checkpoints by frisking them down? Since she's an expert at prison-style patdowns....
[Yes okay I'll stand still while you slap me for that one]

 

Can someone remind me exactly what it is that TSA is screening for?

 

She was one their vaunted BDO's, a highly trained certified mind reader who can extract threats from your deepest thoughts.

Of course TSA did their due diligence and held her to their highest standards of criminal behavior ...

• WIVB (9 Mar 2011): Accused TSA employee has checkered past
• WIVB (10 Mar 2011): TSA employee's past raises questions: Walker was arrested in 1998

 

Great timing. News of her sentencing comes out just as a US military guy gets caught with a live grenade while being allowed to pass with 2 pounds of undetected C4.

We're just lucky Minetta's friends didn't decide to bring C4 through the checkpoint with her assistance.

1) so much for those folks who think 'profiling', TSA-style (a week of BDO training + keeping an eye out for anyone guilty of FWB) is going to be very effective. Meanwhile, we've just passed legislation to make life easier for folks like Atwater, 'cause everyone knows no one in the military ever loses it.

2) so much for the much-vaunted one-time good-for-life background checks that exempt TSA employees from screening for life.

The article mentions (not the first time I've read this) that early in its history, TSA outsourced background checks to an outfit that clearly didn't do a particularly good job. Knowing this (and given what's at stake), there's no excuse for not doing regular updated background checks (and screening TSOs and airport employees.

 

Info I have suggest that some agencies are still out sourcing background checks. BOP being one.

 

G. Gordon Liddy used to consider prison guards the lowest of the low, but his experience with them predated TSA by 3 decades. When TSA finally gets axed, BOP can staff up.

 

I hate for anything bad to happen to anyone, even criminals who are guilty as H#ll. The reason we resent her so much is because the TSA has given her such ridiculous power to abuse others: "She was one their vaunted BDO's, a highly trained certified mind reader who can extract threats from your deepest thoughts."

The idea that someone like her would be given the power to deprive citizens of the exercise of our Constitutional Rights really sticks in my craw. She can't be found guilty of being a BDO, although that's an offense against all things decent. She has to be found guilty of the other, lesser, illegal crime. I'm glad it's not my job to sentence her, because I doubt I could be fair.

 

You brought forth something that has been tickling my mind, is there any recourse for us if a BDO decides 'you're guilty?'
Not only is it word against word, are they really 'god' in the situation? How do we defend against 'I don't like your micro expressions?'

 

God doesn't make mistakes.

 

There appears to be no recourse.

The BDO's have moved to the front of the line in BOS and DTW. If you don't want to play their silly little game, or if you fail it (and you don't get to know why or how. After all, a terrorist would want to know and then could game the system), then you get additional screening.

In a sense, BDO is judge and jury, sending you to the executioner, making TSA as an organization judge, jury, and executioner.

 

There's nothing you can do. They have absolute power. They can make your life (expletive deleted). Like they did Stacey Armato's. And so many others. They can make you miss your flight. Lose your luggage. Etc. etc.

 

Well, you know what they say,

"if you don't like it, don't fly"

 

The irony of it is that she was helping them get large sums of money past the checkpoint - no threat to security and none of anyone's business if they were travelling domestically (which they were).

What is scary to me is what's been alluded to up-thread: BDO's have way too much unchecked power. She apparently had the authority to escort these guys around security unquestioned and did so for years. No one should be able to bypass security that easily.

Did anyone ever read how she got busted? Was it a co-worker practicing 'see something, say something'?

 

The how would probably be quickly shuffled into the SSI label because if we knew, a lot more blue smocks would be busted-crippleing their roster.....

 

Few things are more repulsive than the DHS's current obsession with our wallets. It is no business of our government's if we're traveling with cash. Never should any citizen have to tell a TSA thug how much cash they have on them.

Some of the most disgusting strip searches and gropes have been perpetrated against little old ladies with a few crisp bills pinned to their foundations. I'm sorry, but before about 1970 you couldn't travel for more than 20 miles or go out on a date without all your female elders sagely suggesting that a few fifties should be pinned in your bra. (This isn't a crime, it's crime prevention!) That money was supposed to hire you a cab if your date was a masher, or get you a bus ticket home when all else failed. Who anticipated that someday ladies would be stripped and groped by government thugs for the crime of obeying centuries of matriarchal wisdom?

PS: Note that none of this would have happened if it weren't for the "War" on Drugs. Let's not kid ourselves, the goober-mint's obsession over cash is about drugs. We're all being shaken down so that the feds can continue to fight illegal drug traffic. Drug trafficking wouldn't be so lucrative if it weren't illegal. It's a vicious circle, and we're footing the bill for this conflict and seeing our Constitutional rights become casualties of war.

This is what happens when the government decides to legislate morality. Those of us who choose not to abuse drugs pay an unacceptable cost in order for the Nanny State to "protect" the tiny minority for whom self-harming behaviors constitute an irresistible draw.