Has anyone actually ever tried pepper spray? A very short spritz aimed nowhere near people is enough to take down a whole room. It does not surprise me that some curious little monkey tried it out and felt the sting.
I was that little monkey once. I let it go for a very short burst in the corner of the room my high school choir was warming up in just before they went on stage. Oops.
Elaborate, please--that's worth derailing this entire thread.
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Does this mean TSA considers the odds to be so low they don't train "If you have that once in a career event and really find something dangerous, here is what to do with it. . "?
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The worst part of all this is that the American taxpayer will surely now pay disability claims from both of these TSA agents. I bet they find a way to be out of work for months do to this "injury".
Originally Posted by Henrey K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer
(05-21) 13:47 PDT SAN JOSE -- Nine agents with the federal Transportation Security Administration were accidentally doused with pepper spray at Mineta San Jose International Airport today when a canister of the powerful chemical discharged, an airport official said.
The incident happened at 10:45 a.m. when a passenger at Terminal C realized that he had a canister of pepper spray in his bag and handed it over to TSA employees at an X-ray machine, said airport spokesman Rich Dressler.
The TSA agents were preparing to put the canister in a hazardous-materials container when it somehow discharged, Dressler said.
No airport staffers or passengers were affected, but two TSA agents were taken to Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Santa Clara. The seven others were checked at the scene.
Hmmmmm . . . I wonder if Homer can still get his old job back at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant?
tough call...
Homer can sleep on the job at Springfield Nuclear Power Plant...
however, his current job at TSA is doughnut-sniffing.
He has made flying safer by making sure passengers don't
board planes with doughnut which we all know can be used
as dangerous weapons. After he confiscates the doughnuts,
he take them home for further examination ....
OK, I was there when this happened. It affected way more than 5 people. Everyone I could see, ~30 people (including several pilots) in line at the security X-ray machines were all coughing and wiping their watering eyes. Also, a friend of mine about 100 ft back in line also said they were hit by it also. It was very disturbing. But the worst part was that none of TSA people would tell us what was going on. I assumed it was pepper spray, but they should have communicated it to us. TSA handled this incident VERY badly.
Welcome to FlyerTalk kryten! Thanks for sharing your first-hand report.
Thanks. I was searching on Google to ensure that it was just pepper spray that I inhaled, when I came across this forum. I fly a little over 100k miles each year, and I am glad that I now found this forum.
regarding the whole "big catch" concept that TSOs live by.
Very quick math with rounded numbers: Assume a career is 40 years, working from age 22 to 62 (forget early gumment retirements). There are about 40,000 TSA screeners, and have been for 5 years. That is 5000 person careers and NOT ONE terrorist found. Big catches are very rare.
From the TSA blog they seem to find about 20 guns per week, or about 1000 per year. So 1 out of 40 screeners finds a gun every year. Thus, if a screener works a 40 year career, the odds are they will find ONE gun in their entire career. Hence the "big catch" mentality, as finding a gun is a career highlight event for any one individual screener.
Any individual would get bored and fall asleep on the job if they worked 20 years and found nothing. For this reason Kip has instituted an Approved On the Job Entertainment System for the amusement of screeners: they can steal toothpaste and throw it in the trash can. Kip's brilliant plan seems to be working.
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Welcome to FT, kryten; your handle denotes excellent taste in comedy .
Just a quick question since you were on hand during the incident, which of the checkpoints in Term C at SJC did this occur? It has been awhile since I've been there (and there is a lot of construction, so apologies if my info is out of date), but I know the checkpoint to the south of the food court (leading to UA, B6, US, CO, and NW gates IIRC) is located at the end of a narrow corridor that is not well-ventilated. I have often wondered what would happen if the crap hit the fan at this checkpoint how orderly an evacuation would be, given the bottleneck layout of this checkpoint.
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Welcome to FT, kryten; your handle denotes excellent taste in comedy .
Just a quick question since you were on hand during the incident, which of the checkpoints in Term C at SJC did this occur? It has been awhile since I've been there (and there is a lot of construction, so apologies if my info is out of date), but I know the checkpoint to the south of the food court (leading to UA, B6, US, CO, and NW gates IIRC) is located at the end of a narrow corridor that is not well-ventilated. I have often wondered what would happen if the crap hit the fan at this checkpoint how orderly an evacuation would be, given the bottleneck layout of this checkpoint.
There is only one checkpoint now for Terminal C, due to construction. The old Alaska gates have been removed. It's actually more efficient than the old three checkpoints.
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