TSA’s Badges Are a Sore Spot With Cops

Screeners at the nation’s airport checkpoints are going to start wearing police-style badges - but real officers aren’t too happy about it.

Some sworn officers fear airline passengers will mistake screeners for law-enforcement officials with arrest powers.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is starting to equip its 48,000 screeners with 3-inch-by-2-inch, silver-colored, copper and zinc badges that will be worn on new royal-blue police-style shirts.

The attire aims to convey an image of authority to passengers, who have harassed, pushed and in a few instances punched screeners. “Some of our officers aren’t respected,” TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe said.

Nor should they be. Not only is what they do an egregious infringement on the 4th Amendment but also the 9th and 10th and perhaps the 14th. It’s also an affront to private property. It doesn’t matter what outfit you wear. This, this, this, or this. You make people’s lives more difficult without any benefit.

“A lot of cops at airports are not real thrilled about it,” said Duane McGray of the Airport Law Enforcement Agencies Network, an airport police association. “It’s another way of saying (to airport police), ‘You’re not important.’ “

Boo fucking hoo. Police in general are far less important then they think they or wish they were. The war on drugs has given the police officer profession a sense of importance that is completely undeserved. Do consumers want protection services? Sure. But the police don’t offer protection.

I hope this leads to a showdown between the local and federal authorities in the same way the Real ID law is. Reminds me of another South Park reference:

AUTHORITARIAN FIGHT!!

From over at Reason.tv:

Jiminy | April 25, 2008, 11:35am | #

Hi there - I’m the writer, director, editor, and producer of the video in question, and while I admit it’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek, it’s not intended to be anti-libertarian by any means. I wrote the poem 10 years ago when a Koch Associate applied to work for my organization and listed “libertarianism, poetry” as her interests. We all chuckled back then, before “South Park,” and before the explosion of new media and groundbreaking graphic art propagated by Bureaucrash (to see what I mean, check out bureaucrash.com and jdtalley.com). The idea of “libertarian poetry” seemed incongruous. The most committed libertarians I associated with back then were econ nerds. “What do you want to do, privatize sidewalks?” was a common sort of ridiculous question we’d get when defending the libertarian point of view, and then there’s the blanket assumption that all libertarians are atheist or agnostic. (I myself am a Catholic Christian, and as far as I can tell “Thou shall not steal,” i.e. private property, is still in the Bible.) So in any event, if anything the poem and video are poking fun at a stereotype of libertarianism, a movement today much more influential culturally and more diverse than it was 10 years ago. If any libertarians or anarcho-capitalists take offense to the video, please note that it was not intended to offend you.