[While the
Obama administration has attacked the use of racial and ethnic profiling in Arizona and elsewhere, the claims by the Boston officers now put the agency and the administration in the
awkward position of defending themselves against charges of profiling in a
program billed as a model for airports nationwide.]
By Michael S. Schmidt And Eric Lichtblau
 |
Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated
Press
that are already
using behavior detection officers.
|
In interviews and internal complaints, officers from the Transportation
Security Administration’s “behavior detection” program at Logan
International Airport in Boston asserted that passengers who fit certain
profiles — Hispanics traveling to Miami, for instance, or blacks wearing
baseball caps backward — are much more likely to be stopped, searched and
questioned for “suspicious” behavior.
“They just pull aside anyone who they don’t like the way
they look — if they are black and have expensive clothes or jewelry, or if they
are Hispanic,” said one white officer, who along with four others spoke with
The New York Times on the condition of anonymity.
The T.S.A. said on Friday that it had opened an
investigation into the claims.
While the Obama administration has attacked the use of
racial and ethnic profiling in Arizona and elsewhere, the claims by the Boston officers now put the agency and the administration in the
awkward position of defending themselves against charges of profiling in a
program billed as a model for airports nationwide.
At a meeting last month with T.S.A. officials, officers at Logan provided written complaints about profiling from 32
officers, some of whom wrote anonymously. Officers said managers’ demands for
high numbers of stops, searches and criminal referrals had led co-workers to
target minorities in the belief that those stops were more likely to yield
drugs, outstanding arrest warrants or immigration problems.
The practice has become so prevalent, some officers said,
that Massachusetts State Police officials have asked why minority members
appear to make up an overwhelming number of the cases that the airport refers
to them.
“The behavior detection program is no longer a
behavior-based program, but it is a racial profiling program,” one officer
wrote in an anonymous complaint obtained by The Times.
A T.S.A. spokesman said agency inspectors recently learned
of the racial profiling claims in Boston . “If any of these claims prove accurate, we will take
immediate and decisive action to ensure there are consequences to such activity,”
the statement said.
The agency emphasized that the behavior detection program
“in no way encourages or tolerates profiling” and bans singling out passengers
based on nationality, race, ethnicity or religion.
It is unusual for transportation agency employees to come forward with
this kind of claim against co-workers, and the large number of employees
bringing complaints in Boston could prove particularly damaging for an agency already
buffeted with criticism over pat-downs, X-ray scans and other security
measures.
Reports of profiling emerged last year at the behavior
programs at the Newark and Hawaii airports, but in much smaller numbers than those described
in Boston .
The complaints from the Logan officers carry nationwide implications because Boston is the testing ground for an expanded use of behavioral
detection methods at airports around the country.
While 161 airports already use behavioral officers to
identify possible terrorist activity — a controversial tactic — the agency is
considering expanding the use of what it says are more advanced tactics
nationwide, with Boston ’s program as a model.
The program in place in Boston uses specially trained behavioral “assessors” not only to
scan the lines of passengers for unusual activity, but also to speak
individually with each passenger and gauge their reactions while asking about
their trip or for other information.
The assessors look for inconsistencies in the answers and
other signs of unusual behavior, like avoiding eye contact, sweating or
fidgeting, officials said. A passenger considered to be acting suspiciously can
be pulled from the line and subjected to more intensive questioning.
That is what happened last month at Logan airport to Kenneth Boatner, 68, a psychologist and
educational consultant in Boston who was traveling to Atlanta for a business trip.
In a formal complaint he filed with the agency afterward,
he said he was pulled out of line and detained for 29 minutes as agents thumbed
through his checkbook and examined his clients’ clinical notes, his cellphone
and other belongings.
The officers gave no explanation, but Dr. Boatner, who is
black, said he suspected the reason he was stopped was his race and appearance.
He was wearing sweat pants, a white T-shirt and high-top sneakers.
He said he felt humiliated. “I had never been subjected to
anything like that,” he said in an interview.
Officers in Boston acknowledged that they had no firm data on how frequently
minority members were stopped. But based on their own observations, several
officers estimated that they accounted for as many as 80 percent of passengers
searched during certain shifts.
The officers identified nearly two dozen co-workers who
they said consistently focused on stopping minority members in response to
pressure from managers to meet certain threshold numbers for referrals to the
State Police, federal immigration officials or other agencies.
The stops were seen as a way of padding the program’s
numbers and demonstrating to Washington policy makers that the behavior program was producing
results, several officers said.
Instead, the officers said, profiling undermined the
usefulness of the program. Focusing on minority members, said a second officer
who was interviewed by The Times, “takes officers away from the real threat,
and we could miss a terrorist we are looking for.”
Some Boston officers went to the American Civil Liberties Union with
their complaints of profiling, and Sarah Wunsch, a lawyer in the group’s Boston office, interviewed eight officers.
“Selecting people based on race or ethnicity was a way of
finding easy marks,” she said. “It was a notch in your belt.”
The transportation agency said it did not collect
information on the race or ethnicity of travelers and could not provide such a
breakdown of passengers stopped through the behavior program.
But the agency defended the program’s overall value.
Behavior detection “is clearly an effective means of identifying people engaged
in activity that may threaten the security of the passengers and the airports
and has become a very effective intelligence tool, enabling law enforcement to
bust larger operations and track any trends in nefarious activity,” the agency
said in its statement.
“In addition, the deterrent value of the program can’t be
overstated,” it said. Monitoring passengers’ behavior “adds another layer of security
to the airport environment and presents the terrorists with yet one more
challenge they need to overcome” in their efforts to defeatairport security measures, the agency said.
But government analysts and some researchers say the idea
of spotting possible terrorists from their behavior in a security line relies
on dubious science.
A critical assessment of the program in 2010 by the
Government Accountability Office noted that aviation officials began the
behavior program in 2003, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, without first
determining if it had a scientific basis.
Nine years later, this question remains largely unanswered,
even as the agency moves to expand the program, the accountability office said
in a follow-up report last year. It said that until the agency is able to
better study and document the validity of the science, Congress might consider
freezing tens of millions of dollars budgeted for the program’s growth.
Based on past research, the accountability office said the
link between a person’s behavior and mental state is strongest in reading
“simple emotions” like happiness and sadness.
But the link is weak in determining from behavior whether
someone is lying, the report said, and “nonexistent” for determining “when
individuals hold terrorist intent and beliefs.”
Representative Peter T. King, a New York Republican who has
pushed for more aggressive counterterrorism measures, said he was troubled by
the reports of profiling in Boston .
“If it is going on, it is wrong and can’t be defended,” Mr.
King said.
Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Port Authority, which runs Logan airport, is eager to review the findings of the T.S.A.
investigation, said David S. Mackey, executive director of the agency.
“There is no place for racial profiling in any security
program,” Mr. Mackey said. “It is illegal, and it is not effective.”
