John Duncan (R-TN) Blasts "Useless" Air Marshal Service.
"In fact, more air marshals have been arrested than the number of people arrested by air marshals.
We now have approximately 4,000 in the Federal Air Marshals Service, yet they have made an average of just 4.2 arrests a year since 2001. This comes out to an average of about one arrest a year per 1,000 employees. Now, let me make that clear. Their thousands of employees are not making one arrest per year each. They are averaging slightly over four arrests each year by the entire agency. In other words, we are spending approximately $200 million per arrest."
He wants to save $860 million by not funding the agency. Sounds good to me. I assume there's a more effective way to use that money for stimulus.
Update: Sigh, my bad, this is from 2009. Serves me right for following links from twitter.
11 comments:
do you judge the effectiveness of a police force by the number of arrests or the crime rate?
It's not effectiveness of the police force but of the money spent. As you point out, he doesn't talk about crime rate vs number of arrests. Since we don't hear of many other crimes on airplanes (and I've witnessed zero and only heard of one kindle theft from a friend) I'm assuming the crime rate is low. But there does seem to be something genuinely wrong with more arrests among the force than by the force. And there has to be a better way to spend $860 million to keep us safe (or to boost the economy).
I would think that the air marshal programs mission is more of a terrorism deterrent. Since there have been so few attempts at terrorism lately why don't we just cut all the money we spend on deterring terrorism across the board.
See that all seems a logical fallacy. By that argument we never get to spend less since anything might be a deterrent effect. There doesn't seem to be evidence of a deterrent effect and I'd think the TSA one would be even larger. Though security experts (e.g., Schneier) have been calling this stuff security theater since the beginning because it's always trying to thwart the last attack. After the shoe bomber and we all had to take off our shoes we were all joking thankfully he wasn't the underwear bomber, and then... Much better to put effort into Intelligence efforts.
Still the most effective deterrent we've done to prevent another 9/11 is to reinforce the cockpit doors and locks. The only thing that actually saved lives on 9/11 is still illegal to use on a plane, a cell phone.
If the reason is that it's not an effective deterrent then that's a good reason, my point is the argument from representative Duncan is without merit.
I think his argument has merit, it's just not a deterrent based one. I wonder how many of the arrests were terrorism related (I'd suspect few if any). Would that change the equation? Even as a deterrent system, it does seem an expensive one.
from the TSA website
"Federal Air Marshal
As a Federal Air Marshal, you will detect, deter, and defeat hostile acts against U.S. air carriers, passengers, and crews. You will be an armed Federal law enforcement officer, deployed on passenger flights worldwide to protect airline passengers and crew against the risk of criminal and terrorist violence. You will perform investigative work and participate in multi-agency task forces and in land-based investigative assignments to proactively fight terrorism. As a Federal Air Marshal, you will promote public confidence in the safety of the nation's aviation system as a "quiet professional" in the skies."
I don't see where they are supposed to arrest people. It's like rating homicide detectives on how many tickets they write.
Serves me right for following twitter. This article is from 2009. In a little looking I can't find much more detail on their effectiveness. I get there can be a deterrent effect, I just want to quantify it. I've seen some reports that they hand over arrests to other law enforcement but don't know if that's true.
It gets even worse for both of us. We are getting old.
http://hmelman.blogspot.com/2010/08/air-marshal-service-useless.html
At least we're consistent. Sigh. Have a good weekend.
Robert MacLean - The Great Pretender
For the longest time, Robert MacLean was hailed as a national hero. He was paraded around by the Government Accountability Project (GAP) and the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) as one of the most important whistleblowers of our generation. The mainstream media published a multitude of articles about MacLean and the horrors he faced for blowing the whistle. GAP and POGO called MacLean a prime example of the federal whistleblower experience. Lawmakers rallied to join the outpouring of support, praising his heroic actions. MacLean declared that as the result of his firing by the Department of Homeland Security, he was destitute, in desperate need of a job and on the verge of bankruptcy. His case sounded like the prototype of a heartbreaking whistleblower story. Trouble is, much of it simply wasn’t true.
Click on the link to continue reading: http://www.examiner.com/homeland-security-in-los-angeles/the-great-pretender
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