Originally Posted by
studentff
Re: the grenade, I agree that these cases need to be taken seriously and that evacuations are sometimes, maybe even often, warranted.
But I do think there are cases where TSA could ask the passenger/owner a few questions and resolve the alarm without calling in the bomb squad an evacuation.
In a lot of cases, simply asking the passenger a question like "do you have anything that might resemble a grenade" and then evaluating the response alongside the totality of the situation (e.g., 85-year-old passenger, sheepishly admits he forgot his souvenir, etc.) would help. If TSA trusts their vaunted "behavior detection officers," (BDOs) then they should use the BDOs to evaluate responses in these cases. If the BDOs are worth their cost, they should be able to tell the difference between a sheepish souvenir carrier and a nervous/malicious terrorist in the vast majority of cases.
There have been too many cases where a power supply wrapped in some cables, or a slightly unusual electronic device, have resulted in TSA freakouts that probably could have been avoided with a simple conversation.
See
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=534358 for an example and
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=515053 for another.
Some of these incidents have resulted in serious property loss for the passenger with no compensation from TSA or other agencies. See:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=368482
and
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?p=4991865
And that is one thing that is wrong with the TSA; they need to have a stricter hiring process; such as only prior professional Military personnel with common sense and the expertise to make a command decision. The way it is now; they have to take every situation as it is the real deal, or people are going to get hurt. Even if TSO’s were all prior Military, for certain situations such as with something that appears to be an explosive, no one should just assume it’s not because the person with the item doesn’t look like a terrorist. That is when mistakes happen and people get killed.
Semper Fi,
Bob