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Quote:

Originally Posted by studentff

No it's not. Go read the excerpt from the federal court ruling in my post #56 in this thread. In the cited case ($124,~~~) Customs had a policy of giving $250 rewards to screeners for reporting cash. If you don't like my excerpt, see the findlaw link in the same post.

I don't think urban legends are in the habit of making into federal court rulings.

I read your post and think I understand the misperception. Reading case summaries is tricky and can be misleading.

One paragraph reads:

Quote:

[9] This Court held that an unlawful secondary purpose
invalidates an otherwise permissible administrative search
scheme in $124,570. See $124,570, 873 F.2d at 1247.
$124,570 addressed the validity of administrative searches for
weapons in the carry-on bags of airline passengers. See id. at
1240. The $124,570 court acknowledged that an administra-
tive search for weapons and explosives is valid. See id. at
1246. The court, however, found that where the scope of the
search was no longer for purely administrative purposes, but
included criminal investigatory purposes, it could no longer
be justified as an administrative search. See id . at 1246 n.5.

All this paragraph is saying is that security searches conducted for a specific purpose other than the primary administrative one is unlawful. In other words, if I conducted a search of your bags for the specific purpose of looking for drugs or cash in excess of $10,000, then I would be violating the law. And I've argued this same point consistently in all my posts.

Quote:

In $124,570, the Flight Terminal Security officers ("FTS
officers") executing the searches had a dual purpose when
conducting the search. In $124,570, the United States Cus-
toms Service and Port Police had a policy of giving FTS offi-
cers a $250 reward for reporting a passenger carrying over
$10,000 in currency. See id. at 1241.

With this policy in place, a dark mass was revealed when
the defendant's briefcase passed through an airline's x-ray
scanner. See id. The FTS officer asked the defendant to open
the briefcase, revealing a large sum of money. See id. The
FTS officer returned the briefcase to the defendant and
allowed him to proceed on his scheduled flight from Seattle
to Los Angeles. See id. The FTS officer notified the appropri-
ate authorities and the defendant was subsequently arrested in
conjunction with this currency. See id. at 1241-42.

Holding that this search was invalid, the $124,570 court
noted that the FTS officers had very broad latitude in deter-
mining whether or not to search a package. See id. at 1245.
The court reasoned that if the sole purpose of the search was
to find weapons or explosives, the court could defer to the
guard's judgment regarding when to search a bag. See id. The
addition of the dual motive created a different set of facts
because "the decision to open a particular briefcase may be
motivated by the desire to comply with the FTS's cooperation
policy." See id. Therefore, the FTS officers might choose to
search bags more often or to do more extensive searches
because of the dual motive. See id. at 1246. Because the dual
motive extended the scope of the administrative search
beyond the reasonableness standard of the Fourth Amend-
ment, the court held that the search was invalid. See id. at
1247.

The Government argues that $124,570 stands for the propo-
sition that a search conducted with both a proper and an
improper motive is invalid if the improper motive expands the
scope of an administrative search. Therefore, the Government
argues, $124,570 does not apply here, because Schaller was
properly searching for weapons as well as drugs and did not
search in any compartments that could not have contained
explosives. Further, the Government distinguishes $124,570
on the ground that the $250 reward provided an "almost irre-
sistible incentive" for the FTS officers to improperly expand
the scope of their searches.

This refers to one incident challenged in court. I tried googling the case itself but kept coming across tangent cases rather than the one that specifically details this particular incident. From what I read in this case, an airport security screener initiated a search of a passenger's brief case because of a dark mass that appeared on the x-ray. This is a perfectly legitimate reason to conduct a security search. If we can't clear it through the x-ray, we must clear it with a physical inspection. Furthermore, the screener reported the large amount of cash to the appropriate authority, and the police acted on it by arresting the passenger at a later time.

The court decision argues that because of a standing policy by the US Customs and Port Police of offering a $250 reward to Flight Terminal Security officers (which can be assumed to apply to airport security screeners), the motive behind the search becomes questionable and taints the legitimacy of the search. The court decision does not say that the screener was actually paid this $250 nor does it say that airport security screeners were ever actually paid any rewards whatsoever by the US Customs and Port Police. It also does not say whether this was a practice limited to Seattle where this incident took place or if this was a practice at every airport. Lastly, there is no timeline identified. I don't know if we're talking about private contract screeners pre-TSA or if this refers to TSA screeners.

I used to be a contract screener and can tell you that we were never given any rewards for reporting $10,000 in cash to Customs, the airport LEO or anyone else. The only "incentive" we were given was if we found bombs, guns or knives with illegal blade lengths during the course of our duties, and this was only a $25 to $50 "bonus" that was paid by our contractor company not the airlines or any government agency. Since this was only company policy, it stopped the day TSA took over our airport.

The urban legend here, my friend, is that TSA screeners receive some sort of monetary incentive for reporting cash to Customs officials. This is completely untrue.

As it is right now, whenever we find real guns with real bullets at the checkpoint, all we get is a fancy looking piece of paper and a handshake from the FSD. On one occasion, I think a screener even got a paid day off. That's it. As for reporting $10,000 in cash, we've never received any sort of monetary rewards. Certain supervisors give us grief because of the additional paperwork required to report the incident. Of course, some of you will insist that I'm not being upfront or that there's a grand government conspiracy between Customs and TSA. Feel free to believe as you wish.

As federal employees, we are subject to a whole list of government regulations and policies that prevent us from giving any appearance of conflict of interest or perception of conflict of interest. We barely get away with receiving the 10% airport employee discount for a cup of coffee. (No duff on this one! This stumped our management for a while before they finally said it was ok.)