Earlier this week, a Bulgarian national, Nikolay Volodicv Dzhonev, was arrested at an airport in Atlantic City, N.J., after security screeners found a pair of scissors in a soap dish and two box cutters in a box of aftershave.
Normal people do not, as a matter of course, hide cutting tools in their personal hygiene products. Dzhonev was released two days later. His only apparent crime was being dumb enough to get caught taking knives onto a post Sept. 11-era airline flight.
Without a doubt, the Transportation Security Administration will use this situation to show that the system works. They couldn’t be more wrong. Finding Dzhonev was a lucky break. All too often, airport screeners have let real weapons or weapon-like objects through while confiscating harmless objects and humiliating innocents.
It’s all part of a growing problem: Even with all the noise from the government about beefing up airline security, we’re not much safer now than we were before.
A 9-year-old boy’s “G.I. Joe ” action figure was one of the few “people” unceremoniously disarmed by security screeners so far. The child, Ryan Scott, of Plover, Wisc., was boarding a plane in a Central Wisconsin airport in August, when his carry-on luggage was selected for a random screening. Screeners found a 4-inch, by-no-means-functional replica rifle meant for (Sgt.? Lt.? Commodore?) Joe to carry while blasting random pieces off Charlie and Cobra. Airport security officials removed it as an “illegal replica”of a weapon, according to the Stevens Point Journal.

Oh. Wow. You idiots found a potentially lethal hunk of rubber. I mean, somebody could have choked! Yet, around that same time, a woman was arrested in Philadelphia for carrying a real .357 handgun and 25 rounds of ammo as she entered the terminal getting off her flight — a gun that she had when she boarded the first leg of her flight in Atlanta.
To repeat, screeners did not find the gun until she debarked from the plane. This makes me feel just warm and fuzzy all over. If they can crack down on a li’l plastic M-16, certainly it’d be easier to find the real McCoy, right?
An 86-year-old general and ace fighter pilot has even been the target of some of the more imbecile searches. Gen. Joeseph Foss was waiting to catch a flight to Arlington, Va ., at Phoenix International Airport. He had to be searched manually, as he had a pacemaker and couldn’t go through the metal detector. So far, so good. Then they found his Medal of Honor, a star-shaped medal that is the highest honor a serviceman can earn. It was alleged later that the screeners were worried that the medal could be used as a throwing star. This, along with a small dummy bullet on his keychain and a small set of nail clippers, set into motion the demand that he be strip-searched three times.
It is almost insulting to the intelligence to think that someone who had earned the Medal of Honor would somehow use it as a makeshift weapon — and by an 86-year-old to boot! It adds insult to injury to find that now, 10 months after the fact, the head of the TSA, James Loy, has characterized the checks as more hassle than they’re worth.
I firmly believe that the function of security screening for the airlines should be taken over by the government, and their promise to federalize screeners is a step in the right direction. However, I believe that the people who should be doing the screening should not be the usual airport screeners.
Instead, hire and train police officers to handle the screening process. They have the education to make judgments with more certainty about what should and should not be confiscated and who should and shouldn’t be searched.