Jeff Ballinger
Associated Press Don't bother searching
online auction sites for pocket knives handed
over to airport screeners, at least not those
surrendered at the San Luis Obispo County Regional
Airport.
While some airports around the country give the
contraband to schools or hand it over to nonprofit
organizations -- which raise funds by selling
the confiscated items online -- the local airport
is among many in California that sends the stuff
to another federal agency, which then throws it
all away.
"Everything gets destroyed," said Craig
Piper, a security coordinator employed by the
local airport.
Everything, however, except the more intriguing
items kept on a bookshelf as a trophy case of
sorts in the airport office of the Transportation
Security Administration, the federal agency created
in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept.
11, 2001, that oversees the screening of passengers
at the nation's airports.
The shelf contains obvious weapons like switchblades,
short- and long-bladed knives and brass knuckles,
but also items like lighters that look like guns
and combustible materials in spray cans.
There are two leather straps that passengers
described as page-holders for books, a local TSA
screener said.
The straps, however, have a metal weight in one
end, and the screener demonstrated convincingly
how it could be used as a blackjack to bludgeon
someone.
Federal authorities in charge say the relatively
small haul of items collected at the airport is
taken to the dump, though some metal objects may
be melted down for scrap.
According to federal figures on airports nationwide
obtained by the Deseret Morning News in Salt Lake
City, screeners at the San Luis Obispo airport
confiscated more than 11,000 potential weapons
from nearly 360,000 passengers from February 2002
to March 2003.
The local rate of 29 potential weapons per 1,000
passengers is higher than at the largest airports
in the nation, but then the airports with the
highest rates were among the smallest in the country.
Despite the figures, the TSA announced a plan
last month to reduce by Oct. 1 the number of screeners
at San Luis Obispo's airport to 13 from the current
21.
Federal authorities prefer the term surrender
to confiscate, since passengers are not technically
required to hand over the items -- they can give
them to a loved one not flying, throw them away
or put them in their cars parked nearby.
The federal agency has given the surrendered
items to the Santa Barbara office of the Department
of Justice, which disposes of them, for about
a year. Prior to that, the state's Department
of Surplus Property took the items, which it tried
to auction off. That wasn't working well, however.
"Our warehouse was filling up with junk
we couldn't get rid of," said Matt Bender,
a spokesman with the state Department of Surplus
Property in Sacramento.
It's not uncommon for passenger contraband from
other airports to wind up on an online auction
site, said Nico Melendez, a TSA spokesman. When
it does, he said, it's not the government doing
the selling but the non-profit agencies the TSA
turns the items over to from some airports around
the country.
At some airports, passengers can use envelopes
to mail the banned items to themselves. But with
close parking lots allowing passengers to quickly
return forbidden items to their cars, that option
is not offered here.
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