A Massachusetts man accused of murder and rape in a crime spree against nonwhites appeared in court yesterday with a swastika carved into his forehead. Twenty-two-year-old Keith Luke pleaded not guilty to rape and two killings in Brockton Superior Court. He was ordered held without bail. The victims were all of Cape Verdean descent. Luke did not have a swastika on his head when he was arrested, and apparently carved the symbol while in custody. Luke's lawyer asked yesterday that his client be sent to a psychiatric hospital, but a judge refused. Luke allegedly told authorities he was fighting the extinction of the white race. (AP)

A TSO seeing this guy wandering around the airport post self-mutilation might
invite a LEO or 3 to check him out.

Bob brought her onto the team as a Blog Commentator.

Surely Kelly Mae has Bob's complete confidence to post thoughtful comments in response to the current remarks.

I also said they observed him timing himself and counting his footsteps as he traveled from terminal to terminal. The Nazi tattoos were just sprinkles on the top.

A handheld GPS would have been far more inconspicuous.

Further proof that Blogger Bob is one of us at heart.

Not enough to let her moderate while he is at
the "Free Water, TSA's Greatest Resource" conference.

Did you read the post: "We focus on behaviors to flush out the possible terrorists, not appearance." -- TSA can't tell a terrorist by appearance.

Did you read my post?

I guess not...

You chose to make appearance an issue to make your point. You can't do takebacks after you've been called out on something.

Who is doing takebacks? Look at my statement. They noticed a guy timing himself and counting footsteps. The team followed him through several terminals and decided to confront him. Once they approached him they noticed several Nazi tatoos. No one approached him because of the tattoos it was his behavior that made him suspicious.

I'm not saying Nazi tattoos make you a terrorist. They are uncommon and make people stand out. I would add any uncommon features about this person into the story for example if he was wearing a clown suit, LEO uniform, Military uniform, cross dressed, or had "Kip Hawley is an idiot" tattooed over his eyelids.

Or, one could hypothesize, they approached him because of his Nazi tattoos and wrote that he was "timing and counting footsteps" in their report to artfully hide the fact that the tattoos were really what they keyed off to determine their need to approach...

Dont you mean one could fabricate?

No, I clearly meant hypothesize. By your phrasing, you were NOT a member of said team. This means that you are going off of third-party information. People embellish stories all of the time. The fact that the LEO let the individual go means there was no RS/PC to hold him for further investigation. Given the attitude of the majority of the TSA Barney Fife community that I have witnessed over the years, and the years of experience in a firehouse (another realm of GREAT stories), I have no qualms in making my hypothesis.

From your rendition of the incident, it was the LEOs that interrogated/confronted the guy, not the TSOs. The behavior itself was not enough to call in the mounties until they approached and noticed the tattoos. Were the tattoos relevant? To the TSOs? To your post?

I just thought it was funny that one of the main points in the OP's linked PV post is about how appearance doesn't matter.

West really doesn't like it that I accused TSOs of using the Nuremberg defense.

Did you explain that you were only doing as you were told? ;)

The mans behavior was very abnormal. which is why they followed him through several airport terminals. They believed that he was trying to determine which terminal he could escape from the fastest. The team tailed him for a while until they felt like that he was finished then approached him. They were probably looking for a valid reason for his actions. OCD or something of that nature. I was told that he "flipped out" on them. So the LEOs took it from there.

They followed the individual around and confronted him before seeing the tattoos so no they didn't confront him because of them. I think the guy not cooperating made them far more unsettled than any tattoo could. I added the tattoos into the post because its just not very common. Like I said earlier if he had a clown suit or Kip Hawley tattoo I would have added that too.

Counting, checking, flipping out when confronted? That poor guy might have had a bad case of OCD. I hope that the police confronting him dealt with him professionally.

He actually thinks I accused him of genocide. :eek:

An anonymous has already gotten a comment through that explains what the Nuremberg defense is, and I submitted one that hasn't been approved yet.

Ah, so thats why the BDO's picked up on this person.

Please provide a link to a incident report so we can verify the facts of this incident.

I dont have a link to any incident report. The guy was apparently doing a dry run or mapping out an escape route. The LEOs didn't have enough to detain him so they let him go. The whole point of my post was to show you that crazy stuff like that happens all the time without being reported to the media. TSOs are constantly briefed about these incidents though.

I was agreeing with the statement the OP quoted.

Silly rabbit, that report is SSI. ;)

Then provide a copy of the document that was used to brief the TSO's about this incident.

I dont work for the TSA. Even if I did I wouldn't go document hunting for you.
Do you ask all the other posters on this forum to provide documentation for their stories?

If I remember correctly you did say you worked for TSA for a couple of years.

Would you mind saying why you left?

Ever since Ron started claiming we needed to provide documentation to back up our claims, its time TSA apologists did the same. So since you did not work for the TSA and have no way to document this incident I will take it at face value. An urban myth used by the TSA to show that there is a bogeyman hiding in the closet.

I genuinely disliked the job and felt that a lot of the rules were asinine. Stuff like zip lock bags, entire flights with SSSS, the PASS system. After my first year I took a ton of exams for other jobs. ICE, NYPD, PAPD, DOC, Bridge and Tunnel, the list goes on and on. Eventually my list number came up.

Why do I still lurk flyertalk? If you haven't noticed I enjoy debating especially when playing devils advocate. This website is a good outlet for it.

I'm confused, does Ron run Flyertalk or the TSA blog?
We are on Flyertalk right now if you don't ask anyone else on Flyer talk for documentation don't ask me for it.

The only people who are unable to provide documentation or unwilling tend to be current and former TSO's. This is not about how Flyertalk is run, this is about providing me with a credible source instead of just taking your word of "if you only knew what we knew and saw what we saw".

I am a former employee and like I said even if I could I wouldn't.

I have seen some pretty outrageous stories posted here. What I'm asking is why don't you hold other posters to that standard? Would it be fair to say that you are bias towards me?

I'll be more than glad to hold anyone on this forum accountable, there is no bias towards you. since you are no longer a TSA employee that means you are less than credible when it comes to statements about current TSA policies and problems. As your experience is outdated.

I think it is admirable that you left. Anone staying in a job they don't like is certainly not doing themselves or those who they come in contact with any favors.