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Article
Cops rush to fill Air Marshall Jobs
Kevin Johnson/USA Today
Washington � Hundreds of U.S. law enforcement officers who have guarded the nation�s borders, monuments and federal buildings are leaving their jobs to become air marshals and airport security officers in a shift that is creating new public safety concerns.
The officers are being lured by the promise of larger salaries at the Transportation Security Administration, the agency Congress created two months after the September 11 attacks to take over airport and airline security. With a $4.8 billion budget this year for aviation security, the TSA is hiring an unspecified number of air marshals and wants up to 54,000 passenger and baggage screeners.
The TSA�s hiring binge has touched off a nationwide recruiting war among U.S. agencies that are trying to expand their forces to deal with anti-terrorism duties. The TSA, offering raises of $10,000 or more to many recruits, is draining talent from the already struggling INS, as well as the Secret Service, the U.S. Capitol Police, the U.S. Park Police, the FBI and the local police.
The INS, criticized for not tracking tens of thousand of foreigners who have stayed in the USA long after their visas expired, has been hit particularly hard by defections, immigration officials say. This year the INS, which includes the Border Patrol, plans to hire 570 agents. Many are to take up posts along the porous Canadian border, where National Guard officers are monitoring several crossings until enough agents be trained and sent there. But having lost 566 Border Patrol agents, immigrations inspectors and other officers to the TSA, the INS must hire and train 1,136 officers to meet security mandates. INS officials say the defections have contributed to an alarming increase in attrition there, from 9 percent in 2001, to 17 percent this year. The INS has 30,000 employees, including 10,000 Border Patrol positions.
�We have a critical problem that could ultimately threaten public safety,� Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said of the federal recruiting war.
Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer said his agency, which has 1,750 officers and other personnel, has lost 46 officers to the TSA. Most were veterans with special skills, such as SWAT team members. �We�re losing a costly investment,� he said. �It�s not good business.�
Except, perhaps, for the officers who are cashing in. Gainer said some officers who were making more the $50,000 a year left his agency for raises of $20,000 or more at the TSA.
TSA chief John McGaw did not return phones calls seeking comment on his agency�s recruiting. TSA officials have said more than 200,000 people have applied for sky marshals� jobs. Experienced marshals paid top scale, with overtime, could make more the $84,000 a year.
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