=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SF Gate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/c/a/2002/07/02/BA167244.D= TL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Tuesday, July 2, 2002 (SF Chronicle) SFO screeners miss 18% of weapons/Other airports did worse in last month's = tests Matthew B. Stannard, Chronicle Staff Writer Roughly one out of five times, screeners at San Francisco International Airport failed to detect mock weapons and explosives that federal testers placed last month in carry-on and checked baggage, an airport security official said Monday. The 18 percent failure rate caused some concern among security experts, who said the public deserved better. "Missing almost one in five for regular, run-of-the-mill items in people= 's bags isn't very good," said Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general of the Transportation Department who is a critic of airline safety. The results were based on more than a dozen tests at SFO, according to Ed Gomez, the security director at SFO for the federal Transportation Security Administration. The TSA planted fake weapons and explosives in baggage at airports across the nation, and San Francisco screeners fared well in comparison with others, Gomez said. At Los Angeles International Airport, screeners failed to catch the mock devices 41 percent of the time, more than twice as often as San Francisco, Gomez said. At three airports -- Cincinnati, Las Vegas and Jacksonville, Fla. -- undercover testers got past security at least half the time, a TSA official told the Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity. "When you look at 50 percent, with some of the biggest airports around, (San Francisco's performance) is not too bad," Gomez said. "Eighty-two percent of the time, we would find the object, stop, open the bag, and be able to question and remove it." Some of the highest marks went to screeners in Miami, Newark, N.J., Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Honolulu, who found hidden simulated weapons or explosives at least 90 percent of the time. TSA spokeswoman Mari K. Eder said Monday that the agency would continue = to test how well the screeners found weapons and explosives to help improve security. Schiavo, based in Columbus, Ohio, said San Francisco's numbers appeared = to have improved since she was inspector general of the Transportation Department in 1996, when SFO screeners had "the highest failure rates in the country." However, Schiavo said her testers would try to conceal the fake weapons = in baggage, whereas the TSA's testers simply plunked the devices into their bags - - simulating an absent-minded passenger, not a stealthy terrorist. "I think Americans expected more after the much-touted government change in supervision," Schiavo said. In February, the Transportation Security Administration, rather than the airlines, began supervising airport checkpoints, but the screeners continue to work for private companies. Federal employees are supposed to replace them by Nov. 19. San Francisco, however, is not going to get new screeners. Instead, under a two-year pilot program, SFO will be one of five U.S. airports to retain privately contracted security screeners, the federal government said last month. Currently, government employees are screening passengers at only three airports -- Baltimore, Louisville, Ky., and Mobile, Ala. -- but the security agency said last week that it would begin overhauling checkpoints at more than 130 other airports this month. That's the first step toward replacing the private screeners with an all-federal workforce. And the sooner the better, said David Stempler of the Air Travelers Association, who added that while the traveling public had a right to expect no more than a single-digit failure rate, the test results shouldn't be surprising. "The reality is this is about par for the course before the Transportati= on Security Administration took over. It's the same screeners doing the same work, it's just they have new bosses," he said. "We're trying to keep terroris= ts and criminals and other people with guns off the airplanes. . . We need people that are trained as law enforcement and paid accordingly." But Schiavo, the former inspector, said it might not matter very much whether the airport hired all new screeners or kept its old ones. The reality, she argued, is that screening luggage is a mind-numbing task regardless of training and pay, and it is difficult for screeners to keep sharp 100 percent of the time. The solution, she suggested, might be to institute a "bounty" system whe= re screeners would be offered incentives for each piece of contraband they caught at the gate. "The stick hasn't worked," she said. "It's time to try the carrot." Chronicle news services contributed to this report. / E-mail Matthew B. Stannard at mstannard@sfchronicle.com.=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2002 SF Chronicle