Unless you happen to be one of the thousands of real parents/guardians who are likely to be "identified" when a TSO "thinks" a child at the checkpoint is the subject of the alert(s).

Mission creep is only justifiable if it stands a chance of success.

I'm not at all connected with the criminal justice system, but what common sense I have tells me that an abductor wouldn't go through the expense of flying someone somewhere just to murder them. I would speculate that most abducted children who are murdered are killed pretty soon after the abduction and fairly close to the scene of the crime. I'm sure there are exceptions, but certainly not enough to justify the TSA spending even more of our tax dollars. I really feel sorry for families flying together who will get harassed and even detained.

The permanent psychological damage done to a young child witnessing their innocent parent(s) being detained, questioned, handcuffed, and led away by inaccountable government officials at an airport checkpoint is simply inexcusable.

Your shortcomings in the field of criminal justice are far outweighed by your overabundance of common sense. ^ Everything you said is extremely accurate. Too bad DHS lacks such knowledge.

As another poster said, kidnappers don't snatch kids, take them for a plane ride and then kill them.

Far enough out of town that the killer had to take a plane to get there?

In the two cases I mentioned, the bodies were recovered within 100 miles of where they were kidnapped from (one 14 months after being abducted).

However, there are at least 4 unsolved child abductions in the Bay Area within 25 miles of my home, one with a 4 year old female, another with a 7 year old female, and another with a 3 year old male taken from inside a house during the night. The fourth child was 13 years old. None of these children have been located.

The children of interracial couples and parents who have adopted a child are more likely to be hassled by this kind of practice too.

Oh, give me a break! The overwhelming majority of Amber Alerts are issued when a non-custodial parent takes the kid. It is, for all intents and purposes, a civil matter and doesn't result in child murders. I can't think of one child murder that involved flying on a commercial airline. Can you?

This "think of the children" mentality is just ludicrous. I don't ever want to see a kid murdered, but I'm also not willing to further compromise my Constitutional rights, much less disrupt an entire nation depending on efficient and reliable air transport on the one-in-ten-million chance that a murderous child abductor is sniffed out by TSA. LEO's are trained to look for missing children -- they guard the peace, and are professionally qualified to detect suspect behavior. Let them do their job, and leave the rest of us alone.

No, it is not worth it.

I've seen reports (sorry, I don't recall the cites) that indicated that, when Amber Alerts are posted on CA freeway signs, accidents go up because people are reading the signs rather than watching their driving. I also would be pretty pissed if your "phone everyone in the area system" woke me at 3 am and effected my performance on my job or driving in to work in the morning. What am I supposed to do, run outside in my bathrobe and start a search?

There is a limit to the extent to which we are responsible for others in our society, and there is also the concept of diminishing returns. Publicizing a child's disappearance is one thing. Expecting society to come to a halt because a child is missing is another.

Hmmm. Are there many flights between Oakland and San Jose? SFO and Oakland?

And what makes you think they involved air travel?

I have no idea if they have, as the cases are unsolved.

Unless I start fishing, I can't think of one murdered child who was kidnapped by a stranger and who was flown commercially by their kidnapper within the US. I'd bet it's the same for most FTers, regardless of what some may claim. That is, there just aren't that many strangers kidnapping kids and flying them commercially within the US.

Look at this from a different perspective, though. When a child is kidnapped, does it hurt to have more people aware of the kidnapping within hours of it occurring, so if they notice the child on the way to work, or in the back of a car on the way home from work, they can call the police. If the information on the abducted child can get out to more people within hours of the kidnapping, that's more sets of eyes looking. It doesn't have to just be TSA...the info can get out to utility workers, firefighters, postal workers, and if they have a fax, even employees at supermarkets. You could even make the case for a blanket e-mail with a photo attached going out to a region around where the kidnapping occurs, something that doesn't happen now. From my perspective, there's a lot more communication that can be done when a child is abducted compared to just alerting the media and other police agencies, particularly within that first few hours after abduction.

The TSA has been so ineffective and inefficient, there organizationally is a desparate need to show something, anything that can possibly be considered a benefit to society and can be packaged for PR release. Regardless of whether it's really someother organization's mission or whether the TSA is really effective/efficeint at providing that presumed societal benefit.

I'm waiting for the "TSA/FAM helps cat out of tree story."

It doesn't hurt to have more people aware, unless making them aware increases car accidents (Amber Alerts do). It does hurt to tell TSA, "you've got a knew 'responsibility.'" I guarantee you that not one child's life is going to be saved by this latest round of PR idiocy. I also guarantee that there will be people who will be harassed, will miss flights, will have be humiliated, will have unpleasant encounters with LEOs, etc., because of mistakes made by TSOs.

Wow...
 

New here and have been luking and reading for a while now, especially in this forum. I have to say, I've heard from other folks that this forum was quite the viper's pit, and from what I've seen, it's true. What gives?:confused:

McFlyer