A federal officer was watching passengers at
Sacramento International Airport on Wednesday when one caught his eye.
A young man in line, unshaven and carrying a backpack, apparently looked suspicious.
The officer was not a typical Transportation Security Administration screener. He was a specially trained Behavior Detection Officer. BDOs work in the agency's Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques program (SPOT) and are trained to study a person's face and body language for hints of his mental state.
They roam all parts of the airport, including curbside.
"Officers are screening travelers for involuntary physical and physiological reactions that people exhibit in response to a fear of being discovered," the TSA says on its website.
The young man at the Sacramento airport apparently displayed something unusual. TSA officers pulled him aside for secondary screening, ran a computer check and discovered he was wanted for an out-of-county probation violation.
Sheriff's deputies arrested him. They told us they don't know what triggered the probation violation.
We tracked the man down. He said he had pleaded no contest six years ago to cocaine possession, and didn't realize he was on probation. Nor does he know what he did to attract TSA attention. "I was acting the way I normally act. I was talking to an older lady. We were laughing," he said.
The question some watchdogs ask: Are arrests like this a success for the TSA's anti-terrorism efforts?
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/08/31/164552/roaming-airport-screeners-look.html
A young man in line, unshaven and carrying a backpack, apparently looked suspicious.
The officer was not a typical Transportation Security Administration screener. He was a specially trained Behavior Detection Officer. BDOs work in the agency's Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques program (SPOT) and are trained to study a person's face and body language for hints of his mental state.
They roam all parts of the airport, including curbside.
"Officers are screening travelers for involuntary physical and physiological reactions that people exhibit in response to a fear of being discovered," the TSA says on its website.
The young man at the Sacramento airport apparently displayed something unusual. TSA officers pulled him aside for secondary screening, ran a computer check and discovered he was wanted for an out-of-county probation violation.
Sheriff's deputies arrested him. They told us they don't know what triggered the probation violation.
We tracked the man down. He said he had pleaded no contest six years ago to cocaine possession, and didn't realize he was on probation. Nor does he know what he did to attract TSA attention. "I was acting the way I normally act. I was talking to an older lady. We were laughing," he said.
The question some watchdogs ask: Are arrests like this a success for the TSA's anti-terrorism efforts?
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/08/31/164552/roaming-airport-screeners-look.html
No comments:
Post a Comment