Who's Going Through Your Luggage and Keeping You Safe at OIA?

This report was released last year as the TSA agency boasted in the press about the efficiency of their layered security at OIA:

TSA Claims Victory for Arrest at Orlando Airport

04/03/2008 - The arrest of a man attempting to smuggle bomb-making materials onto a flight from Orlando, Florida, to Jamaica, can be attributed to the government's behavioral screening program, says the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Police grabbed Kevin Johnson, 32, an Iraq war veteran who recently worked as a contractor in Iraq, while he walked through a terminal at Orlando International Airport. Behavior detection officers operating under TSA's Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) program had spotted his erratic behavior and requested his bags searched.

TSA's Evolution of Security blog says what occurred Tuesday shows the value of behavior detection officers and TSA's layered approach to security. This is an excellent example of the layers of security in action throughout the airport. This is also a good example of using specially trained Behavior Detection Officers to look for people with hostile intent as well as the items they intend to use. It's a further testament that the behavior detection program works ...

Hold on a second... If their “layers of security" are so efficient, then how did this incident below happen with one of their own employees:

TSA Worker Arrested On Drug, Gun Charges

quote:
ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. -- Drug agents have arrested a TSA security officer Wednesday who worked at Orlando International Airport on drug and weapons charges. Eyewitness News has learned that the employee worked as a transportation security officer while going through the TSA's checkpoint at Orlando International Airport, but early Wednesday morning police arrested 41-year-old Timothy Monroe during a high-risk search warrant of his home on Coral Reef Road in Palm Bay. Officers said that's where agents with Palm Bay's special investigations unit found guns, drugs and cash they said he's used in an illegal drug trafficking for quite some time.

Here is a slideshow.

Here is another incident from 2007 involving airport employees at OIA:

Ex-worker at OIA says he smuggled guns, drugs

Agents: Airline Employee Agreed To Smuggle Guns On Plane

Gun Shy has been at OIA on a number of occasions, and has observed some of the TSA employees that work there. In my opinion, many of them are just average people trying to make a living, and not the super security team that was boasted about in the opening article.

Here is a bonus article and video about another OIA worker for the readers.

It is starting to appear that "the people who keep you safe" and the agencies who employ them have their own issues when it comes to background checks, screening, and security.

Here is the latest icing on the OIA safety cake:

Air Traffic Controllers Inexperienced In Orlando

quote:
Orlando International Airport may be one of the busiest airports in the country, but federal officials say too many of its air traffic controllers have too little experience. U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General Calvin Scovel cited Orlando as having the nation's highest percentage of controllers in training to become certified when he testified before Congress. Orlando has the 11th largest passenger volume in the U.S. Forty-seven percent of air traffic controllers at the Orlando airport lack certification -- about double the percentage of uncertified controllers nationwide.