The Air Marshals Are Just Hick Town Sheriffs

The last time I got a speeding ticket I took a driving school course to get the ticket expunged. One of the few useful things I learned that day was to drive carefully at the end of the month. While the Highway Patrol denies it, they have their officers on a ticket quota. At the end of the month, patrolmen are looking for any rinky-dink offense to make their ticket quota.

I told you that story to tell you this one. Avoid flying at the end of the month. The Air Marshal Service has its own quota system. Every month, every Air Marshal (at least out of Las Vegas) has to find some poor, innocent passengers to list on their Surveillance Detection Reports (SDR). Getting you name on a SDR labels you as a potential terrorist. You will end up in a law enforcement database, a fact that could haunt you in many ways. Marshals have been told their pay and promotions depend of filing nice fat SDRs.

So you are safer to fly early in the month, when no one is thinking quotas yet. By the 30th, the marshals will be counting the names on the SDRs and you might get tagged for picking your nose on board a plane.

Art is Speed Trap by Norman Rockwell.

tag: air marshal