Ah, the City of Brotherly Love. My home away from home. And apparently "brotherly love" includes sharing the contents of your checked baggage with AA’s finest employees at Philadelphia International Airport.
There are many reasons I don’t check bags and theft is one of them. Last Friday, cops busted four part-time AA baggage handlers after catching them in the act.
Detectives working with airline security set up surveillance cameras and caught the men taking electronics, cameras, and jewelry from passengers’ bags, officials said. Investigators have not yet released a tally of what was stolen and its possible value.
Something must have aroused AA’s suspicion, perhaps a high number of complaints of missing items, but you’ve got to appreciate thieves who are greedy enough to engage in a crime long enough for AA to take notice and install security cameras.
For more details and a look at the mugs of the thieves, click here.
This issue gets back to my recurring theme of airport security. While the TSA strip-searches passengers without probable cause, airline employees, two floors down, are helping themselves to passenger luggage. And if they can take things out of passenger bags, what’s to stop them from placing items inside passenger bags–after they are screened by the TSA? Four bad apples out of 150 AA employees at PHL is not particularly alarming to me, but I think we all would be shocked if we understood the degree of security passengers must endure compared to the paucity of security that baggage handlers encounter through employee service entrances.
What I would like to know is how these criminals exit the airport with all of this stolen stuff? I have long thought that all baggage handlers should be subject to a search upon arriving and departing from work.
I hope these crooks get VERY long prison sentences.
“I hope these crooks get VERY long prison sentences.”
and make sure to cut their hands off so that they won’t do it again.
@Jun: Can’t tell if you’re serious or not, but I’m not so sure we would be any worse off if we had a lot of missing hands rather than a prison-industrial complex in America…
@Matthew: Yes, but cutting off hands is much less expensive than running prisons.
@Gene: I see that my last comment wasn’t clear. I’m actually in favor of a little Singaporean-style discipline.
Far better than building more prisons!