YOUR TURN: Racial Profiling at Logan?
A recent report says its a problem at Boston's airport - is it something you feel you've experienced? Does the idea bother you, or do you consider it a necessary security precaution?
Security staff at Logan International Airport have filed complaints that their co-workers target minorities for security checks, according to the Boston Globe.
Over 30 officers have lodged the complaints, which are under investigation by the Transportation Security Administration, the Globe reports.
Security at airports are supposed to use "behavioral detection" methods to pick up facial expression and body language to deem someone suspicious.
According to the Globe, Logan had once been held up as a model for behavioral detection.
Readers: Have you had a bad experience at the Logan airport TSA? Think they do a great job? Share your story with other readers in the comment section below.
Roland
8:30 am on Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Well I am not sure about this because I just came back from vacation and they let everyone in front of me go through the metal detector and then when I got there they changed to the full body scan and I am age 64 and white so wa sI singled out and if so please explain why or where they just getting there quota of white folk and it was my turn to be singled out.
Chris Caesar
12:52 pm on Wednesday, August 15, 2012
I almost didn't get to my scheduled training for this job because I told the TSA agent that was going to pat me down "(he) wouldn't be touching my," well, you know what.
I was half kidding, but it still caused quite a scene and I almost missed my flight to New York. I imagine for a trauma victim or someone more sensitive then my cold-hearted self it would've been very scary.
Phe
1:43 pm on Wednesday, August 15, 2012
On my first deployment, we flew civilian air from the region to another airport where picked up a contracted civilian airline retained solely for personnel movement. So we had to fly in uniform, with all of our gear. Some of the protective gear was vacuum packed and the minute you open the package, the shelf-life starts. Well, I got pulled out of the security line, in uniform, clearly with a troop movement, and told to open all of my gear, including those sealed items.
That was the first of many exciting adventures that I, as a girl so white I burn in a full moon, have had with TSA over the years. In uniform, out of uniform, it seems that nearly every time I fly, I'm pulled for extra screening - and this began after 9/11 but well before the newest screening technologies and techniques were implemented.
Viva la TSA! < / snark >
Chris Caesar
3:04 pm on Wednesday, August 15, 2012
I actually asked for the supervisor - who threatened me with no flying because I half-jokingly asked not to be groped - for his badge # and filed a complaint. Not that it did much, but it felt good.
Phe
3:13 pm on Wednesday, August 15, 2012
I don't blame you. At least you did it. I wonder how many people have had crazy stuff like this happen and just...let it go?
Kevin
12:59 pm on Wednesday, August 15, 2012
From what I have seen the screenings seem to stop random people. I would like to know what staff are complaining and what are their true motives.
Joe Gray
2:47 pm on Wednesday, August 15, 2012
I went through Logan twice this year. I, unlike anyone else in the line before or seemingly after me, including my small children who were with me, was the only one pulled aside for chemical and additional screening. The first time I was flying alone and I thought it was just random. But the second time in the same summer in addition to the same thing happening the summer before at Logan finally broke through my thick skull. I need a few poundings sometimes to catch on.
I don't get this grief at other airports and I'm still the same name and still the same shade of black at every airport. Logan treats me differently. I don't think they like me watching them, watching me, watch them.
Phe
2:54 pm on Wednesday, August 15, 2012
There's a terrible 80's song somewhere in that last line, Joe. :)
But I'm sorry your experiences at Logan have been so horrible.
Chris Caesar
3:04 pm on Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Yes Joe, totally. When I came back from that aforementioned trip - bear in mind, at JFK, a pretty important airport - they didn't even have the damn scanners set up.
Joe Gray
3:18 pm on Wednesday, August 15, 2012
It's ok Phe. I know what's going to happen, when I go through Logan, so we joke about betting whether they'll keep the streak going and pull me out again for extra searches. Water off a ducks back. Just contributing my experience for the question this article asked.
Phe
3:44 pm on Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Joe - Remind me to tell you about what I ended up doing to ensure that my baggage searches were truncated. After years of being pulled out EVERY TIME, regardless of the airport, I decided to have a little fun. It worked.
And FTR Michael V., I'm white. I'm female. Over 50% of the searches I've undergone have been while in my military uniform. If they are profiling me, based on your assertions anyway, they're doin' it wrong.
Michael Victor
3:17 pm on Wednesday, August 15, 2012
I hope to God they are profiling. Only fools would not be. You can't check everyone so lets see should I pull out young men who are muslims or granny who is 80. Does this make them racist or smart. Sorry for hurting your feelings but that is to damn bad. How many granny's have hi-jacked planes? 0% of those who have done it? How many muslims? a big percent of those who have crashed the planes on purpose and who have been caught with bombs trying to? Common sense which we seem to have lost.
Chris Caesar
3:37 pm on Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Three separate white gunmen were either arrested or killed themselves after three mass murders last month, with one of them considered a terroristic act by the feds.
Prior to 9/11, Timothy McVeigh - a right-wing white person - carried out the largest terrorist attack in American history. Would it be common sense to profile whites as well, given these circumstances?
DannyBoy
4:22 pm on Thursday, August 16, 2012
Hey Michael, profiling in the scenario you describe would work if the targeted individual is a young male, Middle-Eastern looking, with an Arabic name. But, don't forget that Al-Qaida counts amongst its recruits a lot of people from Chechnya, in the North Caucasus region of Russia, who look Caucasian (a lot of them are blond with blue eyes), are Muslim and have Slavic-sounding names. A profiling system on its own is not enough without a known database of terrorists and black-listed names to check an individual's identification against.
Even then, the terrorist can evade detection if he/she wears a disguise and has fake identification papers (which is the case of the suicide bomber in Bulgaria last month, who killed 5 Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver, when he detonated a bomb he was carrying in his backpack on a tourist bus at the airport, and he allegedly had a fake driver's license from the state of Michigan).
Meggle
8:53 pm on Thursday, August 16, 2012
DannyBoy and Chris, you sound right to me.. in fact two years ago it was a caucasian, american-born gentleman who flew a private plane into an IRS building in Dallas, Texas. It wasn't a hijacking, but still a suicide plane attack I think racial profiling puts us at risk from future terror groups, or caucasian agents of current terror groups, such as this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Yahiye_Gadahn. If he shaved and dressed in a suit, I am almost certain nobody would even bother him slightly.
Plus, what happens when people like McVeigh, as Chris mentioned, organize? It could happen, and if they decide to hijack a plane, we would easily overlook them in airport security.
Diana
11:03 pm on Thursday, August 16, 2012
Yeah, I have to say I'm wildly amused at the idea that one can identify a Muslim (let alone a terrorist) by sight. Common sense ain't what it used to be.
Joe Gray
3:37 pm on Wednesday, August 15, 2012
To be clear, there isn't any indication in any of my paperwork, my children's or my wife's that there is anything muslim about us. I'm Roman Catholic by the way and not young. Not even sure where that is coming from. Terrorists can look like anybody, even an 80 year old granny with drugs hidden in her walker. If the new Israeli facial and behavioral detection techniques are truly pulling me out of line due to a my funny terrorist walking style or some other terrorist nervous tick(which doesn't exist), then those people at Logan need to be retrained. The only thing they can bust me for is being observant, which is what they constantly ask us to do over the loudspeakers at the airport. Catch-22 in my case(seemingly).
Large numbers of men, women and children of all nationalities are smuggling illegal drugs and contraband through our airports successfully. Check the police report stats. We're only catching a fraction. Smaller airports are good targets. More bad things than terrorists are coming through and no one should get any pass. But some people get checked more than others, for no clear reason.
Michael Victor
4:20 pm on Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Yes Chris you have that right. And if they start blocking schools and theaters they should profile but as yet they are not. There is absolutely a profile of a kid who shoots up a school and they know what it looks like and yep they are white and not in urban area's hmm. Profiling is not an act of racism it is an act of playing the odds so as to use limited resources in the most effective manner. And nobody said no whites should be pulled out of the aisle or no black or no Asians. But the next time a plane blows up don't tell me you or Joe here won't think Muslim first? If you say you won't you both are lying. Common sense. Next time a kid shoots up people at a school I will think white disenfranchised bullied kid who they had clear signs on. Nothing wrong with this and the way people ought to act in trying to prevent a heinous bloodbath is to profile. Of course you could keep pulling granny out of line and any women for that matter that are non muslim and you are just wasting your time and our limited resources in trying to prevent the next 911. Joe you got pulled a couple of times and that proves what? I've been pulled many more times than that does that mean I must be getting profiled?
Chris Caesar
4:24 pm on Wednesday, August 15, 2012
This is all true, however the article is specifically talking about:
"Concerns about racial profiling at Logan came to a head last month, the Times reported, at a meeting where numerous officers submitted written complaints. They said minorities including black, Hispanic, and Middle Eastern passengers had been routinely pulled aside for searches and questioning, in screenings designed to scan for suspicious behavioral cues such as sweating, fidgeting, or avoiding eye contact.
Experts on security screening practices said the news out of Logan was especially disappointing because the use of behavior detection was developed as a way to avoid profiling by race. The Boston program had been touted as a model of more sophisticated screening."
Joe Gray
4:53 pm on Wednesday, August 15, 2012
I'm not diasgreeing with you at all Michael. But you are veering extremely off topic. I am answering the question asked in this article. If you get incensed somehow by my answering the news article about "personal" experiences at Logan, I don't know that anyone can get through to you. I'm going to stop going down that path with you.
We can get a discussion going about airport security and religion and profiling all day long. But this article wants us to relate our "PERSONAL" experiences at Logan, not yammer on about arcane political philosophies about how people should be profiled and who should be profiled. Yeah, I got pulled a few times at the airport. That was my "personal" experience at Logan. I shared "my" story "as requested". Do I have any chance of getting through to you? I'll be happy to debate and agree with you on general topics of airport security elsewhere. :-)
Meggle
3:23 pm on Thursday, August 16, 2012
Oh man. In high school I dated someone from the south that *always* got the "terrorist treatment" every time we went through Logan Airport, which was a few times a year. Our skin shades differ in that I am the whitest woman in the world, he was a little darker than I am. It was a hassle. I've never, EVER gotten randomly searched at Logan, but I have at other airports.
Mike G.
12:19 am on Friday, August 17, 2012
Well, on a related note, I've never been on a plane that's blown up, so, I guess I have that going for me.
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6:58 am on Tuesday, October 9, 2012
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