by David Clarke
“Officer, over here,” I yelled. “Give me your handcuffs!”
I did not want to let go of the advantage I had with the positioning. The officer gave me her handcuffs. I got one cuff on and told him to put the other arm behind his back. For the first time in that entire two-hour flight, he complied. I cuffed the other wrist, got off him, and the police sergeant took control of him. More officers had arrived. By that time, I wasn’t worried about jurisdiction or any of that other nonsense. I was worried only about protecting people. It was instinctive. It’s what I have been doing for close to four decades. It was second nature.
The airport police escorted him off the plane. Off the jetway and inside the terminal, he continued to be loud and profane toward the officers and airport personnel. They got a look at what we on that flight had endured.
He was charged with several state misdemeanors and was bailed out the following night. Such incidents should be charged as federal statute violations and reviewed by the US Attorney’s Office to send a message of deterrence to passengers about interfering with flight crews and intimidating passengers. Also, where were the federal air marshals on board to take control of the situation?
“In all my years flying, I’ve never seen anything like it,” one passenger said. “The sheriff handled himself extremely well. It could have gotten a lot worse because the guy was not backing down.”
People turned to social media to praise my actions and even called me a “black Chuck Norris.”
Where Have All the Air Marshals Gone?
While I appreciate the encouraging words, I’d much rather the government put more resources toward security when a flight is in the air. All the security is on the ground. The 9/11 hijackers waited to strike until after they boarded the plane. Airplane passengers now are hostage to an unruly passenger. Flights have had to make emergency landings and be diverted for similar incidents. We shouldn’t be forced to choose between traveling and being safe. In 2008, CNN did a nationwide investigation and discovered that fewer than 1 percent of flights in the United States have an armed federal air marshal on board.2 Rational Americans would recognize that not all of the nation’s daily flights will be protected, but you’d think the percentage would be higher than one measly percent. Especially since that year alone, the Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) was given $720 million.3 Where did the money go?
In 2014, USA Today quoted John Casaretti, national president of the Air Marshal Association/CWA, on how many FAMs are on planes. “There are around 30,000 commercial flights per day over the U.S.,” said Casaretti. “If you were to attempt to place a team of just two FAMs on each flight, it would require an agency of over 75,000 FAMs (accounting for training and days off). FAMs cover a very small percentage of commercial flights.” How about something as simple as allowing off-duty law enforcement officers after alerting the airline and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) that they are traveling armed to board with their firearm? How much would that cost? Nothing, but the TSA doesn’t trust local police.
It makes sense why the TSA won’t settle the speculation on how many air marshals exist, but Michael D. Pascarella, assistant supervisory air marshal in charge of the Public Affairs Office of the TSA, acknowledged there were only “thousands.”
Former Navy SEAL Clay Biles, a federal air marshal for five years and the author of the book Unsecure Skies, told USA Today, he estimates there are 3,300 FAMs. However, 34 percent of them are stuck on the ground doing management, operations, or training work. Biles said,
We call them “chair marshals,” riding out their career in management … That leaves 66% of the workforce to perform in-flight security duties. If one accounts for vacations, sick leave, medical leave and days off, some air marshals working in operations have told me that this accounts for less than one half percent of all U.S.-flagged aircraft being covered by federal air marshals.4
When Tom Coburn was the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in 2015, the Oklahoma senator said the TSA budget had gone up despite the dwindling number of agents. He said, “it is unclear to what extent the FAMs program is reducing risk to aviation security, despite the more than $820 million annually that is spent on the program.”5
Apparently, agents have fled the air marshal service because they believe the agency puts its agents in danger. “Everything they did set us up to get murdered,” Richard Vasquez, a former marshal who left the program in January 2015, told National Review. He said the biggest issue was that the agency was not trying to help them be covert at all. They had agents carrying guns that were too big to be concealed. He revealed that on some international flights, the government forced the agents to board the plane first as if the other passengers wouldn’t notice the guy with the gun and no luggage sitting on the plane.
“The numbers are dwindling; now they’re not telling the public this, but that’s the fact,” Vasquez said. “The only people who aren’t trying to leave are people who are past that age-37 range and are meaning to retire.”
That’s comforting, isn’t it? No. The federal government is whistling past the graveyard, hoping we don’t see what is plainly before our eyes.
But safety precautions need to occur way before we end up thirty thousand feet in the air. How many times have you been harassed or inconvenienced at the airport before you even board? I’ve experienced much of this when trying to check my firearm at Reagan International Airport.
“We found this,” a TSA agent said to me once, holding up a loose bullet. He had the look of a teacher who’d just found a cheat sheet stuck in my shoe.
“I know,” I explained as I stood next to the counter. When you check your weapon before a flight, you have to wait off to the side. It’s not a big deal, but it’s a hassle. Some days are worse than others.
“Yes, that’s just a bullet.” The magazine for the gun I was checking was in the same pouch. The magazine for my weapon takes nine bullets. To increase the capability to ten, I chamber a round, then slide another one into the magazine. “When I checked my weapon, it has to be unloaded. I put the loose bullet in a pouch with the magazine attached to the bag like I always do.”
“You can’t have loose bullets,” he said. “So we’re keeping this.”
“Take it,” I said. “Fine.” It was just one freaking bullet, but it represented a lot more. Government “box-checking” at the expense of Americans’ safety. No discretion is allowed. On another occasion, with a different carrier, I was standing off to the side waiting for them to evaluate my weapon, and they came back with my magazine.
As part of the check-in procedure the ticket agent took me through a series of required questions. She asked if the bullets were out of the magazine and in a box. I said no. Now I have been traveling frequently for the last two years. I had never been told the bullets had to be out of the magazine. What are they worried about? The firearm will be in the cargo portion and inaccessible to me or anybody else.
She found an ammo box for me to use, but I fumed. As I took the bullets out of the magazine one by one, I thought, This is so stupid. What difference does it make if they’re in a box or not since the weapon is in the cargo section? It didn’t make a difference on Delta, United, or Southwest, but suddenly it’s a big deal on American Airlines?
Once I was at LAX with paperwork allowing me to board armed as law enforcement.
“Sorry, sir,” the TSA lady said. “You can take your gun but not your knife.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Only Border Patrol can take knives on an airplane.”
“Why not a law enforcement officer who is already carrying a gun?”
“We’re just following the rules, sir.”
I took my knife back down to the ticket agent, explained my situation, and showed my badge and credentials. I really didn’t want to lose my knife.
“Give me the knife,” the ticket agent said after he examined my papers. “I’ll put it in your checked bag.”
I found that promise dubious since my bag had already gone through screening. I figured he just wanted to get rid of me.
However, the guy overrode the screening. Although that is problematic, the guy used sound discretion and did not endanger air travel. The TSA people at the checkpoint could have done the same thing by letting me on with the knife and my gun after checking my law enforcement credentials, but a follow-the-rules mentality reigned that day.
When I got home, the knife was in my garment bag.
Why doesn’t the government allow sound discretion?
I travel to Mexico or the Caribbean every year. Once, returning from Mexico, I landed in the Atlanta airport. Though I’d already been screened in Mexico and was apparently not a threat to board an international flight, I arrived in America to be screened again. They took us from a sterile area, where we’d already been searched, through a nonsterile area to get to the connecting flight to come back to Milwaukee. That meant we had to be screened again.
“Why are you taking passengers who’ve already been screened through this process again?” I asked.
I already knew the answer: they had an architecture problem. Because of their setup, they couldn’t make sure screened passengers stay screened.
“You’re in a nonsterile area now,” he said, “so we have to screen you again.”
“I was screened in Mexico,” I said, then I commented, “This is the problem. We don’t focus on the real threat.”
“Americans can be terrorists too. I’m just following the rules,” he said curtly.
I’m not given to anger, but my blood started to boil. Why would he want to insult an American citizen like that? Sure, Americans can be radicalized, but most of us are not. This agent wanted to paint all Americans with a broad brush. You do that with Muslims and you are an Islamophobe, with African Americans and you’re a racist. But it’s perfectly acceptable to insult an entire nation of US citizens not suspected of terrorism?
I was about to give the guy a two-word suggestion, when my wife came closer to me and said quietly, “Come on, David, let’s go.”
I held my tongue. I didn’t need to be arrested to rebuke the guy for his mind-set that all Americans are potential terrorists. But his sentence is the main problem facing safety on airline flights across America. The federal government wastes time and resources by focusing on a sheriff instead of someone like Omar Mateen. People like me don’t need additional screening. They knew I was a sheriff because I had my badge right there in my bag. What is the risk of the sheriff of Milwaukee boarding a plane and shooting it up? Sure, it’s possible, but what is the likelihood?
Life has risks, so there’s no zero-risk plan of action. That’s why we need a risk-based model, not a follow-the-rules model. Washington, DC, operates under a rules-based instead of risk-based model. Theirs is a check-the-box mentality that undermines Americans’ faith in the government. We shouldn’t give up or change our way of life, like at airports, to protect a failing bureaucratic system or because we are afraid of truly taking on an enemy intent on destroying Western culture.
Why do we still have to take our shoes off during TSA screening?
It’s been years since shoe-bomber Richard Reid tried to detonate his shoes. In 2001, he literally did everything but wear a nametag indicating that he was a terrorist: He got a British passport in Belgium, flew to Paris, and used cash to buy a one-way ticket to Florida. Then he went to the airport without any luggage for an international flight. On that day, three airports failed to pick up these enormous clues. Yet the American government decided to “fix it” by telling all Americans to take off their shoes when they go through airport security.
Later, a Nigerian man named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab hid plastic explosives in his underwear on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. Here’s what you don’t know about Abdulmutallab. His dad called the U.S. Embassy a month before the incident and said his son had called to tell him that was the last time his father would ever hear from him. His father feared his son might do something drastic, so he called the embassy. What did they do with this information? Nothing. When Abdulmutallab showed up and bought a ticket with three thousand dollars cash, no one asked him anything.
Once again, we had an intelligence failure. Yet because of this underwear bomber, millions of Americans have their privacy invaded by full body scans. Again, we miss the flashing red lights. Do we really want the government to see us naked as a precondition of getting on a flight? Do we really want to hobble through security check points without shoes? I like to wear cowboy boots, and I can tell you it’s not easy to get through the check points while wearing them.
Let’s Keep Our Senses … and Our Shoes
I think the answer of most Americans is this: “I don’t want it, but if it makes us safer, I’m willing to put up with it.”
But what if I told you it doesn’t make us safer?
Technology Band-Aids can’t take the place of intelligence. Israel, for example, has the most airtight security, even though Israelis are the target of much anti-Semitic hatred. They’ve never had the no-shoes policy and never suffered an act of terror.
Yet here in America, we are herded through long security lines while TSA agents bark orders at us. “Get everything out of your pockets. Put your laptop in a separate bin.” These ineffective tactics all over America cost airlines millions of dollars of missed flights, not to mention much angst and embarrassment for Americans. It’s undignified and unsanitary for a grown man to be forced to wrangle off his shoes in a line of other people, then walk on the dirty floor that thousands of others have walked down with their bare feet over the previous hours. Then when belongings finally come out of the X-ray machine, one has to grab the shoes, belt, and watch from the conveyor belt, and try to hurriedly put everything back on before the other bins push them down to the end of the line. It’s annoying, unnecessary, invasive, and another sign of government incompetence.
Wouldn’t it be earth shattering if someone in Washington, DC, did a risk assessment by studying other nations that allow passengers to keep their shoes on? What if, after looking at the information, bureaucrats said, “Listen, we were wrong. Everyone can keep their shoes on during airport security checkpoints”?
But that’s not how our government works. Once something is in place—no matter how ineffective—no one has the guts to be the guy who says, “Enough!” It takes a small amount of courage to unring the bell, but it’s still more than our politicians seem to possess. They don’t want to take the chance that something might happen somewhere.
Real leaders, however, can evaluate the risk, realize that something somewhere might happen, and have the courage to change the policy anyway.
In his final report to Congress, Senator Coburn wrote that “there is and always will be a perpetual struggle between security and liberty in a free society. Liberty requires security, but too much security can result in a loss of liberty. And the erosion of freedoms is rarely restored. We should never have to give up our rights to preserve them, and our Constitution which specifies the rights of the people and the limitations of the government does not even allow for such an exchange. This balancing act has become increasingly complicated.”
I agree.
We’re harassing Americans unnecessarily because we’re focusing on everyone instead of the more probable terrorists, we’re ignoring actual intelligence, and we seem to seriously lack common sense.
It’s time the TSA realizes these regulations are stupid, don’t stop terror attacks, and hurt Americans every day.
Let’s give these policies—and maybe even the bureaucrats—the boot.
14
The Left’s Dreaded Enemy: Black Conservatives
I REACHED FOR A MUG in my office, passing over the one with the word Cowboy on it and settling on the one emblazoned with John Wayne’s profile. The words inside the rim—Courage is being scared but saddling up anyway—disappeared under my coffee, half & half, and Truvia.
“Dear David …” I read the first e-mail in my long list and sighed. I’m not a sit-in-the-office sheriff because there are very few problems in my office. The problems lurk out there in the field. I physically go to the office only if administrative things need work like signatures on forms, my e-mail needs to be checked, and other administrative tasks need my attention—necessary evils that keep me from being on the street. “I couldn’t even bring myself to call you Mr. Clarke,” I continued reading. “You are a sorry excuse for a man, an African American man at that. You are a white washed piece of … I watched your interview … on FOX, and almost punched a hole through my TV. Who raised your coon…?”
That’ll wake you up.
“You are a disgrace to the Milwaukee Police Department,” it continued, “a white stain on the black community. You can believe that your white friends and colleagues are your friends if you want to, but they won’t hesitate to shoot down your 17 year old grandson or slam your 28 year old niece’s head into the ground. You think that because the white man wears blue, you can wear blue and be accepted. You’re a joke. To them, behind your back, YOU ARE JUST ANOTHER N—. A house n—at that.”
The fan mail was signed, “a member of the African American community.”
Believe it or not, that was the edited version.
I took a sip of my coffee and smiled.
Know what I call it when I get a really offensive e-mail accusing me of selling out my race? Tuesday.
“How do you read those types of e-mails without getting down on yourself?” one coworker asked when he walked by my desk and saw me grinning. It’s easy. I know my identity doesn’t rest in outboxes of “fans” like these.
Let’s face it.
It’s very easy to get “identity” wrong. Frequently, we identify ourselves by the color of our skin (even though Martin Luther King Jr. warned against that very approach). We might identify ourselves by our accomplishments … or, more likely, our failures. We might define ourselves by the fact that we have a wonderful spouse or great kids. We might rely very heavily on the label we give ourselves, Democrat or Republican, and fight with anyone who isn’t in our group. But when you define yourself by anything other than the way God defines you, you’ll get in trouble. Only God can really define you. You can’t find yourself by going on a spiritual retreat, practicing yoga, or looking deeply into your soul.