Racial profiling rampant at US airport: Officers

In interviews and internal complaints,officers from the Transportation Security Administration’s “behaviour detection” programme 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” behaviour.

“They just pull aside anyone who they don’t like the way they look — if they are black and have expensive clothes or jewellery,or if they are Hispanic,” said one white officer,who along with four others spoke with The New York Times on condition of anonymity.

The TSA said on Friday that it had opened an investigation.

At a meeting last month with TSA 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 behaviour detection programme is no longer a behaviour-based programme,but it is a racial profiling programme,” one officer wrote anonymously. The programme in place in Boston uses specially trained behavioural “assessors” to scan passengers for unusual activity,look for inconsistencies when approached and other signs of unusual behaviour,like avoiding eye contact,sweating or fidgeting,officials said.

That is what happened last month at Logan airport to Kenneth Boatner,68,a psychologist in Boston. In a formal complaint he filed with the agency afterward,he said he was pulled out of line and detained for 29 minutes. Officers gave no explanation,but Dr. Boatner,who is black,said he suspected the reason he was stopped was his race.