For variety, my s.o. and I took the train instead of doing our long drive, which was nice. We ended up having an interesting chat with this guy who worked for the TSA for a short time. From what he said, it seemed that he was not long out of high school when he got the TSA job. He might have had some junior college under his belt, but certainly not college at a four year school. He was living in NYC at the time of the attacks and so wanted to do his part - which is why he decided to work for the TSA. I gathered from our conversation that he worked there sometime around 2005ish. He wasn't crazy about patting people down (there was a flurry of patdowns in 2004), but the thing that made him quit was the propaganda (his words). They were all in some training area and were being shown videos of people jumping out of the towers and told that if they didn't do their jobs correctly that this is what would happen. He was offended and quit on the spot. I don't know if the TSA still does stuff like this, but thought I'd share it anyway.
Bolding mine. I think that the same kind of training videos are shown now days, except that they show airline passengers on the sterile side and in aircraft drinking deadly explosive bottles of water and juice, clipping their nails, knitting, and using 2 1/2" long embroidery scissors.
Yikes! Besides being creepy, that ignores the fact that 9/11 had nothing to do with checkpoint screening failures. Good for him; I wish more would follow his lead.
It's ironic that the result of getting screeners all amped up to protect people by showing them 9/11 horror footage seems to be that they're more willing to abuse people and treat people like livestock.
Yeah, that's how I felt too after talking to him. He seemed like a sensitive and reasonable person - probably the type of person that the TSA needs more of.... someone who would actually use common sense and act like a decent human being.
I have been here 7 years and luckily, I have not seen a video like that, nor have I heard of one. I have seen classes that have explosions and live footage of the consequences of improper responses to IEDs, but that was more to reinforce the danger of the items, rather than to amp up the people. That sounds like a locally made video, the ones that are part of recurrent training and new hire training (while very dry in many cases) actually tend to preach tolerance (of things that are different from yourself - cultural differences and such) and focus on the job at hand, as opposed to the rah rah that this sounds like.
When I was researching female suicide bombers, I came across training materials used by Homeland Security (I believe) that feature blown apart bodies of suicide bombers in Sri Lanka, etc. Not linking to them, as they are rather shocking. Unless people were being trained for homicide or bomb squad investigations, I would say such materials are not necessary and their use betokens some other objective of the trainer.
Agreed. I don't want to see the pictures, either. I'll just point out that when this happens, often -- I'm not saying in every single case in the history of the world, I'm saying often -- the women are forced to carry suicide bombs. Their children or other family members are threatened. This is more the rule than the exception. (I'm sure it's also happened on occasion with men as well.) But the propagandists of the Perpetual State Of Fear don't want people to know that. Obviously. Neither do some reporters, such as Michael Dresser of the Baltimore Sun, who, after he asked me to provide him with evidence of this, a few seconds later sent me another message saying he didn't care. He didn't want to see the evidence. I still have these emails.
Thus demonstrating his abilities for critical thinking and empathy, either of which disqualifies for TSA employment.
I saw the video in Nashville. But not in the other airports I've worked. It probably depends on the FSD.
