An air marshal left a loaded gun in a Newark airport bathroom.
We already know that air marshalls schedule their work assignments to facilitate vacations and sexual trysts, and are insufficiently trained to do much even if something did happen on their watch. But this isn’t good.
A federal air marshal left his loaded gun in a bathroom stall at Newark Liberty International Airport, then boarded a flight he was assigned to protect without it, NJ Advance Media has learned.
The incident occurred late last month, when the marshal left the handgun on top of a toilet paper dispenser in the public men’s room near Checkpoint 2 in Terminal C
(HT: Brian Sumer)
Nice…
One day, and that day may never come, I may call on you for a favor…
With our laughably inept federal air Marshall program, and now the reporting of widespread groping by TSA agents, it is truly sad how far the U.S. government has sunk into banana republic status.
Worse still, the sap taxpayer (myself included), who happens to travel, actually pays for their own mistreatment. This is the kind of kabuki security we have accepted in exchange for our Constituntional rights in order to have the appearance of security. How much more humiliation will it take for at least a portion of the flying public to say enough and just refuse to accept this garbage?
Any idea whether this was before or after security? I would think that getting their gun through security, then leaving it in a bathroom stall might be more than just a mistake
But did he take the cannoli?
I used to work in a police department as an intern. This is something that happens more regularly than people would like to imagine. The guns are heavy, weigh down their pants and ultimately cause their pants to sit on the floor of the bathroom, which is a bit disgusting. To help prevent this they would take their guns and sometimes entire belts off. Every once in awhile they would space out and forget them in the bathroom. Not sure this is what happened here, but I could see this might be one explanation.
I have lost a cellphone exactly the same way. Whomever foind it never returned it.
Gary,
I know you are a libertarian who dislikes, as a matter of principle, anyone who works for the government…but this is ridiculous. One guy leaving a gun is emblematic of the entire Federal Marshals?
@R – I do not “dislike anyone who works for the government” I have quite a few friends who do. I do not think this one incident is “emblematic of the entire Federal Marchal” service nor do I say anywhere in the post that it is. I do think that the Federal Marshal service is badly run and contributes little if anything to air travel safety. (There are better run and worse run agencies, and agencies that contribute more and less value, this is a badly run agency that contributes little.)