^

Your description supports my personal hypothesis that the probability of destruction of an innocent passenger's baggage depends highly on the level-headeness of (primarily) the LEO and (secondarily) the TSA people involved.

I suspect most of these bag-destructions are a result of some combination of "big-catch syndrome" and power-tripping on the part of someone who has been put in authority. (And I'm not counting among these cases where some idiot pax intentionally makes a lookalike device; I don't consider those people "innocent.")

I can only begin to imagine the supreme rage level of the (multiple) innocent passengers who have had their bags destroyed over the past few years and have almost certainly received neither compensation nor an apology from the at-fault agencies. TSA should be working with the LEO agencies to formalize procedures for compensation of innocent victims and investigation of these incidents to see how they could have been handled differently.

Edit: An aside: It amazes me that there haven't been more media interviews with these victims. I have yet to see an interview with they guy at SFO who had his bag destroyed. I wonder if the LEO agencies or TSA are pressuing these people to not talk or if the media doesn't want to criticize "anything for security" mentalities. If I had my laptop/camera/medication/papers destroyed by TSA/LEOs without apology or compensation, I'd talk to every media agency that would listen.