Creative Commons Photo by John Manoogian III.
Dreading those long security lines during your wild-blue-yonder forays this holiday season?
Well, y’know what makes that shoes-off-laptop-out-belt-off-did-I-forget-my-cell-phone shit fly right by?!?
A little thing called panic!
And you know what? In that regard, the Transportation Safety Administration ishere to help!
That’s right, the Smoking Gun details a the wacky hijinks of a Philadelphia TSA agent who got bored looking for explosives and decided to prank passengers. The Bomb Appraisal Officer (BAO) — whose name has been redacted — was using creatine as a test substance in the evaluation of bomb-detection equipment.
And what does a bomb-detection guy with a wacky sense of humor and no moral code do with creatine!?!
Pretend it’s cocaine and accuse passengers of carrying it!! More than once!!
On his (at least) second go-round with the prank, he found one Wolverine who didn’t find being accused of cocaine smuggling quite the shits and giggles that Captain Fabulous did. The student’s name is redacted from the TSA documents, but not the Smoking Gun account. To quote TSG summarizing the TSA document:
[The] TSA worker approach[ed] two young women who were collecting their luggage from a conveyor belt. One of the women [was] a 22-year-old University of Michigan student who was en route to Detroit.
After first confirming that the items in front of him belonged to the pair, the TSA employee asked the women, “Do you have anything in your bag that you’re not supposed to?” After the passengers answered, “No,” the worker again displayed some purported cocaine. While a TSA memo notes that the white powder was in a vial, [the student] has said that she was shown a plastic baggie filled with powder.
“Did this come out of your bag?” he asked. “The passengers replied, ‘No way. I don’t even know what that is,’” according to a TSA report. The worker “concluded with, ‘I’m just checking. I know it didn’t come out of your bag, it belongs to me. You seem way too nice. Have a good flight.'”
Crying, the Michigan student lodged a complaint, observing that’ she’d dig it pretty hardcore if TSA agents took their jobs more seriously. Five TSA officers (plus the prankster) confirmed that the pranks had occurred, but only one reported the incident to a supervisor.