Originally Posted by
Boggie Dog
If small bags of white powders are possibly explosive in nature why would any TSA employee call for a LEO instead of a person with BOA skills? What is the actual threat being mitigated?
Doesn't the fact that TSA is calling in LEO's in these situations indicate what the suspicion actually is?
I think Ron has boxed himself and inturn TSA into a corner on this matter. There is no way out short of admitting that some at TSA are in fact engaged in illegal searches for items not related to WEI.
Seems like an OIG investigation is in order.
Here's what TSO Jacob said in response to a very similar question at PV:
Powdered explosives have different characteristics then the average powders that passengers carry. When we determine a powder is demonstrating any of these characteristics then we can conduct additional testing to determine if the item poses an actual threat or not. If the item does not teat positive then we allow the powder to fly. If the item does test positive then we call in the police or nearest bomb squad. Fortunately, we do not find explosives on a daily basis so there is no reason to have a bomb squad actually sitting at every checkpoint. Even though we occasionally discover drugs TSA does not search for drugs, nor do we have any testing equipment that will test for drugs, we only test for explosives.
I have no comment other than
