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Skill level of new air marshals in doubt
Josey1
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Skill level of new air marshals in doubt
By Blake Morrison, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON - The government has cut training for federal air marshal applicants and put new hires on flights without requiring the advanced marksmanship skills the program used to demand, USA TODAY has learned.
During a Senate hearing Tuesday, Transportation Security Administration head John Magaw cited the expertise of marshals in explaining his opposition to allowing pilots to carry guns. "The use of firearms aboard a U.S. aircraft must be limited to those thoroughly trained members of law enforcement," he said.
But TSA officials acknowledged Thursday that they no longer require applicants to pass the more difficult shooting test that some argue was the program's critical requirement. The government considers the marshals, who fly incognito, a critical deterrent to hijackings.
Current and former marshals say the advanced training helped prepare them to fire accurately in the close confines of passenger jets. They and others within the TSA say agency officials, under pressure to meet congressional deadlines for hiring, are lowering standards to get marshals aboard more flights quickly.
"Before Sept. 11, if you couldn't pass that test, you couldn't be an air marshal," a source with knowledge of the top-secret program said. "That's how important it was."
A senior TSA official disputed the characterizations and said that the agency has actually raised standards and enhanced training. Applicants still must pass a firearms proficiency test and will have to requalify more often than marshals did before Sept. 11. They'll also get ongoing training in intelligence, surveillance and the advanced marksmanship that used to be required to qualify.
Many come with skills their predecessors lacked, the official said. The entire training regimen "goes far beyond what has ever been envisioned for this program," he said.
Supporters of the program have argued that any armed officer aboard a flight is better than none. But a source who works in the program calls the decision to no longer require the advanced marksmanship training a threat to passengers.
"It's pathetic," the source said. "It's insecure and unsafe."
The source estimated that as many as three-quarters of marshals deployed today were not required to pass the advanced marksmanship test. The source said that many of the proficient marshals are reluctant to team with marshals who haven't passed.
That test is timed and requires shooters to fire quickly at targets about 7 yards away. "If you miss it by a tenth of a second, you flunk," a former marshal said. "And if you miss the target by a quarter of an inch, you flunk."
Before Sept. 11, fewer than 50 marshals provided protection on flights. Most flew overseas routes considered possible targets. While the program has grown, precisely how many marshals work aboard flights is classified. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta promised the Senate committee Tuesday that the agency "will remain exactly on track with the targets" for marshal staffing that it gave Congress in a closed meeting.
http://204.29.171.80/framer/navigation.asp?charset=utf-8&cc=US&frameid=1565&lc=en-us&providerid=113&realname=USA+TODAY&uid=1719758&url=http://www.usatoday.com
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
By Blake Morrison, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON - The government has cut training for federal air marshal applicants and put new hires on flights without requiring the advanced marksmanship skills the program used to demand, USA TODAY has learned.
During a Senate hearing Tuesday, Transportation Security Administration head John Magaw cited the expertise of marshals in explaining his opposition to allowing pilots to carry guns. "The use of firearms aboard a U.S. aircraft must be limited to those thoroughly trained members of law enforcement," he said.
But TSA officials acknowledged Thursday that they no longer require applicants to pass the more difficult shooting test that some argue was the program's critical requirement. The government considers the marshals, who fly incognito, a critical deterrent to hijackings.
Current and former marshals say the advanced training helped prepare them to fire accurately in the close confines of passenger jets. They and others within the TSA say agency officials, under pressure to meet congressional deadlines for hiring, are lowering standards to get marshals aboard more flights quickly.
"Before Sept. 11, if you couldn't pass that test, you couldn't be an air marshal," a source with knowledge of the top-secret program said. "That's how important it was."
A senior TSA official disputed the characterizations and said that the agency has actually raised standards and enhanced training. Applicants still must pass a firearms proficiency test and will have to requalify more often than marshals did before Sept. 11. They'll also get ongoing training in intelligence, surveillance and the advanced marksmanship that used to be required to qualify.
Many come with skills their predecessors lacked, the official said. The entire training regimen "goes far beyond what has ever been envisioned for this program," he said.
Supporters of the program have argued that any armed officer aboard a flight is better than none. But a source who works in the program calls the decision to no longer require the advanced marksmanship training a threat to passengers.
"It's pathetic," the source said. "It's insecure and unsafe."
The source estimated that as many as three-quarters of marshals deployed today were not required to pass the advanced marksmanship test. The source said that many of the proficient marshals are reluctant to team with marshals who haven't passed.
That test is timed and requires shooters to fire quickly at targets about 7 yards away. "If you miss it by a tenth of a second, you flunk," a former marshal said. "And if you miss the target by a quarter of an inch, you flunk."
Before Sept. 11, fewer than 50 marshals provided protection on flights. Most flew overseas routes considered possible targets. While the program has grown, precisely how many marshals work aboard flights is classified. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta promised the Senate committee Tuesday that the agency "will remain exactly on track with the targets" for marshal staffing that it gave Congress in a closed meeting.
http://204.29.171.80/framer/navigation.asp?charset=utf-8&cc=US&frameid=1565&lc=en-us&providerid=113&realname=USA+TODAY&uid=1719758&url=http://www.usatoday.com
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
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"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Exodus of trained officers near crisis stage, lawmakers say
By Brock N. Meeks
MSNBC
WASHINGTON, May 24 - The aggressive recruiting to fill the ranks of federal sky marshals is draining veteran officers from federal police forces charged with protecting everything from sensitive government facilities and landmarks to our nation's borders. The officers are bolting other agencies in favor of the sky marshal program in such large numbers that the situation is nearing a crisis, some members of Congress said.
DEPLETING THE RANKS of already understaffed federal protection agencies couldn't come at worse time. In the last three days the FBI and the Pentagon have warned the public about the likelihood that the U.S. will see more terrorist attacks, including walk-in suicide bombings and attacks on national landmarks like the Statue of Liberty.
"The raid on our ranks began almost immediately," after the push to bolster the atrophied air marshal corps was announced last September, said an Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent who asked not to be named, pending the acceptance of his own application to become an air marshal.
The ATF officer isn't alone. "I have had several Capitol Police officers approach me with their concerns over the loss of officers" to the newly formed Transportation Security Agency (TSA), said Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., who is the ranking member of a committee overseeing the administration of the Capitol Hill federal area. "The Capitol Police are facing a potential 127 percent increase in their attrition rate this year over last," Hoyer said.
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"Of those leaving the force, 35 officers have left or are scheduled to leave for the TSA, which is almost six times more than have left for any other agency in the last few years," Hoyer said. "This is potentially a crisis of capital proportions. The Capitol Police force cannot be a sieve and remain an effective protective force for tourists who come to visit the U.S. Capitol and the thousands of people who work here."
The Park Police, in charge of policing the sprawling Mall in Washington, D.C. and our nation's parks and monuments, have seen 44 of their ranks sucked into the air marshal program, Hoyer said.
The move to bolster the number of federal air marshals came swiftly in the aftermath of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. The federal air marshals, as they are officially known, are specially trained armed police officers that fly undercover on commercial airlines. Before Sept. 11, they were essentially a forgotten police force run by the Federal Aviation Administration.
A pistol-wielding Federal Aviation Administration sky marshal runs between seats during a simulated hijacking aboard a retired L-1011 aircraft at a FAA training facility in Pomona, N.J. last year. The FAA has received more federal funds to increase its programs due to the Sept. 11 attacks.
But in the hyper-vigilant security environment that surrounded the days and weeks of September and October, the mandate went out to immediately raise the status of air marshals. But that order meant both immediate and long-term staffing needs.
Filling these highly specialized positions meant the TSA was going to have to recruit from the ranks of other federal and state police forces.
BORDERS GO BEGGING
But the depleted ranks of the Park Police, the Capitol Police and the uniformed Secret Service pale in comparison to the raid on the front line agents of the Border Patrol.
From October 1st to April 20th the Border Patrol has lost 390 agents to the air marshal program, according to Nicole Chulick, a spokeswoman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The INS lost an additional 54 immigration inspectors and 36 detention enforcement officers to the sky marshals, Chulick said.
"I wouldn't say it's a crisis, but we are concerned," Chulick said. "We're looking at retention and pay issues to see if there's anything we can do. we're looking at what we can do to compete," she said.
INS Commissioner James Ziglar told Congress last year that his agency faces "immense challenges" in trying to keep qualified agents from bolting to other law enforcement agencies.
"The quality of work; the quality of life," are the major reasons Border Patrol agents are keen on trading in their dusty front seats of government issue four-wheeled trucks for airline food and a seat on the aisle 35,000 feet above sea level, said Keith Weeks, a spokesman for San Diego, Calif., Local 1613 of the National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents the agents.
Border Patrol agents can make $10,000 to $15,000 more per year by becoming an air marshal. Federal air marshals make between $35,000 and $83,000; border patrol agents start around $27,000.
"You can't expect someone to sit on a fence for 10 hours a day for 20 years," Weeks said. "The job satisfaction isn't there, the pay isn't there. You can't provide a standard of living for your family," said Weeks, who has had his own application for federal air marshal in since October.
The San Diego sector alone lost 27 agents to the air marshal program in March. It costs the INS an average of $100,000 to train and equip a new recruit, Weeks said.
"Instead of trying to doing something to retain agents [the INS is] spending money to retrain agents," said Weeks. But the money is only part of it, the remaining agents have to work harder and longer and will have less overall experience. "That's just not good for morale," Weeks said.
The INS is aggressively recruiting for the Border Patrol, Chulick said. There are currently some 2,000 openings.
GHOSTS ON WATCH
The TSA declines to say how many air marshals will eventually be policing the roughly 30,000 commercial flights per day as that information is classified.
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said that the TSA would need to fill some 30,000 security positions that includes airport screeners, airport security and the beefed up air marshal corps.
The TSA has no shortage of candidates: The agency closed its application process on May 14th after receiving some 250,000 applications. A spokesman for the FAA, which initially helped with the air marshal recruiting process, said the agency didn't compile any figures that would determine how many officers from other agencies were applying or being accepted into the program.
And while the TSA ramps up and trains its sky marshals, agencies from the Park Police to Coast Guard are assigning agents for temporary air marshal duty.
Regardless of the number of new air marshals, federal law enforcement agencies are feeling the pinch of increased stress, flagging morale and understaffing. All that makes for a foreboding calculus of crisis, says Bryan Vila, a Los Angeles cop before coming an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Wyoming.
The understaffed Capitol Hill police are pulling more overtime than ever and doing it while under a more stressful situations.
"There are basic biological limits to how long you can have officers work consistent with performance and health and safety demands," said Vila, who literally wrote the book on the subject, called Tired Cops: The Importance of Managing Police Fatigue. "It's not possible for any prolonged period of time to keep people working extraordinary amounts of overtime," Vila said.
For example, the Capitol Hill police were pulling 16 hour shifts well into October because of Sept. 11. Though those hours have calmed down, the department is still understaffed. "We're still being made to pull overtime we don't want," said one Capitol Hill officer that requested anonymity. "And don't even think about refusing to the work," the officer said, shaking his head.
Over the long term putting in too many hours degrades performance, Vila said. Too little sleep "is like drinking alcohol," he said. An officer can't keep up long hours and "do that safely or in a way that gives you the kind of performance you need on a job that occasionally requires exquisite quality decision-making," Vila said.
And forget about just tossing money at the problem by recruiting a new crop of officers. A large force that suffers a 30 percent attrition rate "could take five years" to get back up to full speed, Vila said.
http://msnbc.com/news/756077.asp
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878