Castigate the concept as rhetoric and dismiss it? Slick answer, but not thought out completely Doug.
Only three simple improvements that I'd need to add are:
1) "There must be an indictment before reward is awarded."
2) "Whistleblowers must pass polygraph exam on veracity of statement."
3) This is a Federal Reward, not a reward from the Security companies.
I just addressed all your concerns.
Are you REALLY going to enter into a conspiracy to both lose your job AND pull a federal indictment in order for your buddy to gain 10-15000 dollars? (I would imagine sneaking weapons onto aircraft is probably a federal offense, as would be going into a sterile zone with one).
Of course there would be fine tuning and some attempts at fraud. I wasn't attempting to describe the implemented policy but rather the concept. I didn't go into the tax status of the award either or the method of it being doled out.
The point was, and is, to motivate relatively low paid workers to do a better job. Run contests; the person with the most "catches" gets a trip for two to someplace. The team with the most catches gets an extra dollar an hour for the next month. Make it so in order to go up in rank and pay you have to catch people or supervise those who do at least part of the time as opposed to wandering around a concourse for a year or two. Make the nasty security lines the *fast-track* to promotion and better pay so people will want to pull those shifts or stay a little longer to help out before clocking out.
*MOTIVATE* the people to go above and beyond and they will. Because that's how you create real security. It's the above and beyond that gives the edge. The guards have to be willing to take the extra minute to walk down a gate or two and rattle that doorknob one more time, just to be sure. Thing is, you don't get that extra effort without motivation of some sort.
Money, is simply the fastest, most efficient motivator there is. It gets most of us up for work at least five days a week. Pretending otherwise is simply ignoring the obvious. The actual structure of the payout scale is a fairly minor part of this discussion.
I'm not making this up or why I feel proper motivation is *key* to good security, especially in crowd control / access control situations. True story by way of example. Get some hot cocoa.
As the name suggests I used to be a Bouncer at a series of nightclubs in Virginia. One of them was a large capacity (for the area) meet market hip hop dance club. About 1,600 patrons and fully packed every saturday.
Like all such clubs we were having problems with kids trying to use fake ID's and sometimes bring knives or even guns in (hey, it's the "don't diss me" thing). The actual Doormen/Wanders are paid what the inside floor crew is. People were getting through though, we even caught a teenage with a pistol once (And very firmly removed him and handed him over to the police). So a simple, but very effective system was put in place:
1) Two to six off-duty police are outside working the exterior of the building and parking lots. One of whom is always with the doorguys.
2) For every suspicious ID, turn it over to the police officer right there. Don't argue, don't even discuss. Hand it off to the guy with the badge AND gun and let him deal with it.
3) For every fake ID found the doormen found they got 50 bucks. For every real knife (not a penknife) or gun they got more. At first there was a flurry of payouts, and then the fake ID's dropped to pretty much zero as did the weapons.
Because people from as far as 100 miles away had heard "don't even *try it*. They *knew* the doormen would check, thoroughly. Because they had financual motivation to do so with extra care. I have seen some amazing ones in my time. The best I ever personally caught was a kid who used a needle with bleach in it. He would poke through the license card lamination. He then individually dyed the individual inkjet dots on the date white. Turning 1978 ...into 1975. (This was in 98' and I've always remembered it).
The point is, I was motivated to look a little harder. I felt the roughness on the front of the card (where the punctures where), started looking (more out of curiousity than anything else) and voila, had myself an extra 50 bucks on top of my pay for the night. Do you think I checked other cards just as carefully from then on? Yer **** right I did.
And that IS the point. From personal experience as a wander/doorman and later eventually as the head of security with 6 cops and 18 floor/door personel under me I can tell you it DOES work to do this.
Of course a larger organization has to fine tune it to their needs. I'm not saying you hire bouncers to work airports either. What I'm saying is that getting people to perform a menial task for menial pay ISN'T going to work UNLESS you offer some secondary motivator to give them a reason to go beyond.
And that, is the bottom line. The 10000 dollar gun reward or the 10000 "whistleblower" reward may save a plane load of people and a 100 million dollar aircraft. It's absolutely positively justified from an investment/return perspective.
Regards,
-Bouncer-
[This message has been edited by Bouncer (edited 11-18-2001).]