Originally Posted by
Blumie
Actually they can. The TSA agent can see the approximate location of where the metal is that set off the alarm, so should have a good sense of whether it's likely from shoes or from something around the mid-section (a belt or a cell phone in a pocket).
But (as I noted in my OP), the slip on shoes I was wearing never set off the detector in the past [lots of trips through JFK T8]--but lots of people, were being sent back for shoe removal.