TSA screener Margo Lauree-Grant, 41, is the latest TSA employee to be arrested for theft or other crimes at an airport security area. Lauren-Grant is accused of stealing a $7,500 Diamond Master watch from a Canadian traveler after he placed it in a plastic bin. To make matters worse, Lauree-Grant is accused of then destroying the watch when security officials began to investigate.
The traveler alerted security in Terminal 7 at JFK Airport and both TSA officials and Port Authority cops began reviewing video. Lauree-Grant reportedly became nervous and panicked — going to an area where she “smashed the watch into pieces.”
This is the second felony arrest at LaGuardia with TSA staff in a week. The prior week, a TSA supervisor at LaGuardia Airport was arrested for convincing a South Korean college student to go into a bathroom for additional “screening” where Maxi Oquendo then allegedly sexually molested her. The supervisor is now charged with sex abuse, forcible touching, unlawful imprisonment and official misconduct.
Would it be fair to question the overall management of the LaGuardia TSA at this point, at least with regard to hiring practices?
bambam: your overheated response only serves to confirm my suspicions. Unions probably have protected bad workers, but I think those occurrences have been rare; certainly much less often than you can convince me of, even if you were trying to convince me instead of trying to offend.
BTW, How many bad baseball players has the Player’s Union forced MLB teams to keep? While I enjoy this chorus of crickets waiting for your answer I wish you good luck in the future, I hear fiction writing is a highly competitive business. Lucky for you there’s a Writer’s Union.
Yes, it is the right of every citizen to steal that which they do not have. The $7,500 watch, due to its evil conspiratorial nature, drove the poor TSA agent to appropriate it. If only she had been gainfully employed! Oops, but wait, she did have a job. Ok, scratch that theory! If only that watch hadn’t inspired envy! Yes, blame the watch! The watch should serve time. Pun intended.
Thank you, Karen S, for your always well-reasoned and thoughtful comments. They act as a sharp contrast to the mythical musings espoused by those who cling to fantastical theories as to how unions do, in fact, work.
modern miner: Thanks for the links, I now remember that TSA workers were allowed to organize, however without the right to strike they have little bargaining power so they make comparatively low wages. A decent wage does not have to high enough to allow them to afford expensive watches and high-end luxury goods or prime real estate. Union wages never did, for the most part. But they should be high enough to provide them dignity. And why is a secure retirement so ridiculous? I doubt this woman knew how much the watch cost. All she knew was that it looked expensive and she was overcome envy. When it comes down to it, that’s what a $7500 watch is supposed to inspire.
As for unions – my grandfather worked for the railroad. He was inspecting one of the cars when it was unexpectedly “humped”, where cars are joined to the train. The jolt jarred loose a heavy barrel, which fell. My grandfather reached out and managed to deflect it before it could kill the man below it.
The union filed a grievance for management “moving freight.”
Absolute power corrupts, absolutely, and unions are not immune. Once they became too powerful and not accountable, they acted just like many business owners of old did – power hungry and out for themselves.
We have laws in place that protect workers from abuses by employers. Unions have outgrown their usefulness and have become abusive, such as the teachers unions that make bad teachers un-fireable, and inflict them on our kids.
Nick – too funny.
After the articles I’ver read about the poor work performance of TSA, their very high failure rate at detecting weapons and other banned items on test runs, and whistleblower accounts, I would say that the organization is a failed experiment.
I would much prefer the military handle our airport security, much as they do in Israel and other parts of the world. The military are better equipped to perform the vital task of foiling hijackers, and responding to threats. In addition, the duty could be on rotation so that you would not have line fatigue and boredom. They are not un-fireable government union workers, who can twiddle their thumbs and still get paid. Rather, they are highly trained, and subject to courts martial or other consequences for wrongdoing.
More safety, more accountability – that’s a win for us.
Unions in the US were a necessary response to the oppression of the business owners and employers of a different time. Now most issues for which a union would represent an employee are addressed by lawyers and the government. There are still many benefits to having a union but in the US the relationship is still more adversarial than cooperative. An example of where unions have evolved to benefit the whole as well as the worker can be seen in Germany and other European countries. There the major corporations are guided by the holy trinity of government, administration, and labor. This seems to be working out for all. In the US this can be seen to a small degree but the government is too useless to stop corporate from taking wealth and expertise out of the country and labor is still fighting for its existence instead of contributing to the best interests of the country. The country must come first; after all it includes all the individuals.
T. Hall
Far from being considered “a grand claim”–where I mentioned that the family business consisted of a union shop for over forty years–the reference was given to illuminate the idiocy of you, or anyone else, alluding to some ill-conceived notion that a union membership, on the part of this TSA officer, would’ve resulted in a different outcome. The union would’ve served to weed out the thieves among them? Union membership and wages would’ve prevented this from occurring? Either you are stupid, or naive, or both. Unions can, and do, routinely back bad workers, and they do it all the time. A lack of real world experience–as evidenced by your Pollyanna-ish view of unions and how they function–is evident. What you term as anecdotal, on my part, is dismissed on your end because it conflicts with the fallacies surrounding the wonders of unions. According to your comment, if only this poor, pathetic, downtrodden woman would’ve had that precious and sacred union membership, this whole incident would’ve never occurred. Hysterical. This isn’t the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.
You’ve very much changed my way of thinking. There’s no reason why a woman working as a TSA screener shouldn’t be able to purchase a $7500 watch and as liberals, we should be working to ensure these folks have everything they want: fancy watches, lots of fine jewelry, luxurious cars (the new Mercedes-Benz 401K comes to mind), large flat screen monitors and other expensive electronics, prime real estate, and a secure retirement at our expense presupposing these folks would spend it on aforementioned “essential” items.
I make decent scratch (after working my own way through nine years of college and graduate studies), but I’d never think of paying $7500 for a watch. My grandmother used to say something about how quickly fools and their money part ways…
As for your claims of non-unionization for TSA employees, a simple Google search would have greatly benefited:
* https://www.afge.org/?Page=TSA
* http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/13678-tsa-employees-secure-union-contract
bam-bam,
The TSA does not have a union, it was prevented from organizing by Congress.
Whatever about your “family business”; first, it’s only too easy make grand claims about yourself and your background in a forum like this. I suspect there are several who do so on a daily basis. Second, there are many unions that will not back bad workers. Period. Third, it’s nearly impossible to legally foist a worker on an employer, no matter what you may have to say anecdotally.
Milton Friedman is on the Mt. Rushmore of the free market, yet he maintained that unions are essential to a free market economy. His was a considered opinion after much study. The contemporary mindset regarding unions demonstrates how low today’s conservative movement has sunk, and how reactionary it is.
The last point is, if the TSA had a union able to negotiate for decent middle class wages, this woman, even if she had been selected as an appropriate candidate for employment, would have been making enough money and would not have needed to steal. That further illustrates the destructiveness of conservative ideology, the idea that we can drive wages down to the point where people cannot support themselves and the country will somehow have a thriving economy; not just destructive, but unrealistic as well. Conservatives are willing to chew off their own legs.
No secret that TSA screeners are very -I’m not going to say low quality people- but then comes a loss for words…
Unions are not the answer here, they’re part of the problem. Far from acting as a source to weed out suitable candidates for employment, as indicated by T Hall, unions have a self-interest in obtaining as many dues-paying-members as possible to fill their coffers. Acting as any sort of filter, which would diminish or alienate its membership, would be counterproductive. As a result, unions are forced to protect their own, even those most incompetent among them. Trying to get rid of these employees, once they have been hired, is an unspeakable nightmare in many cases. I speak from experience. The family business consisted of a union shop for over forty years. Trust me, the union never, ever served as a means to filter out the good from the bad; rather, the union actually served to keep the worst employees, like this TSA worker, around longer, by putting the onus on the employer to keep giving people–who should be terminated–additional chances at remaining at the job. Yeah, there are the books, the theories by so-called brilliant economists, and then there is reality; often, the two never meet.
These are the sort of hiring practices that could be ameliorated by a workers union. Before anyone scoffs, look into what Milton Friedman had to say about them in his book, “Capitalism and Freedom” (First you probably want to Google Friedman). He said unions were best able to efficiently identify suitable candidates for employers needs.
Justice Holmes
“humans are afraid to object for fear they will be arrested”
= = =
This man wasn’t afraid…
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/man-stripped-airport-court-fine-article-1.1345311
My comment @ 1:11 am no longer makes sense, as I assume the moderator chose to a delete the previous nasty and derogatory comment made to Nick. Glad to see it removed.
The TSA agents are often referred to as “officers” and by other lofty language which is supposed to fool travelers into thinking these buffoons are professionals of some sort. These people are anything but. They are the also-rans left over from the contractors the airlines employed before 9/11, except now they have DHS backing them so they’re just another brand of surly and entitled government employee and know that short of being caught snorting coke behind the illegal x-ray machines while on duty, they’re not going to be fired for dereliction of duty or any other transgression against Americans and their Bill of Rights.
Secure unionized government employment at TSA for the otherwise unemployable was a Bush giveaway to the Democrats in order to get the awful Patriot Act (and other associated post-9/11 bad knee-jerk legislation) rammed through Congress and now we’re stuck with these bad actors forever.
At BWI, DCA, JFK and other east coast airports, one can expect poor attitudes from people who couldn’t possibly possess a high school diploma, while they steal deadly tubes of toothpaste from travelers doomed to have bad breath for the duration of their trip, all while failing miserably at their primary raison d’etre. Yup, they’ve got a 95% fail rate on undercover security tests: http://time.com/3904473/tsa-security-test-breach-fail/. We’ve spent trillions in airport “security” for nothing other than slower and more frustrating air travel.
It appears as though the resident loon is up past his bedtime.
I can see it now–her picture, with the words JUST SAY NO TO CRACK beneath it.
Give people some power and they will abuse it. TSA screeners have a lot of power and humans are afraid to object for fear they will be arrested.
The Canadian was obviously showing off his expensive watch and being insensitive to this woman who is scratching out a living. I say do not prosecute her, make her a hero for the poor and oppressed workers in this country.