Feeling sorry for the screeners

Feeling sorry for the screeners

Dayton Daily News: Even before the controversy about new aggressive pat-downs at airports, didn’t you feel a little bit sorry for the security screeners?

They have such important, but such monotonous, jobs.

Furthermore, passengers are often in a hurry and cranky, rarely acknowledging that the screeners are the forces that stand between them and another shoe bomber trying to blow up their plane.

Now these put-upon people are being criticized for patting down anyone who refuses to go through scanners that reveal nude images to one of their colleagues. (Those screeners are off in a closed room so they can’t put a face with a particular good or bad body.)

Both women and men who’ve refused the scanners (or set off metal detectors) and have been subject to the pat-down have complained they feel violated. Others worry about how a sexual abuse victim would react to being touched in intimate areas. Pilots are objecting because they think they already are vetted enough.

Beating the terrorists, however, is not something you do once. It’s something that has to happen again and again, day after day, and it will take patience from passengers.

The goal is not to irritate, but to keep people alive.