LAX Worst Airport in Nation for Stolen Luggage: Is TSA to Blame?

By Simone Wilson Fri., May 20 2011 at 10:00 AM

Keep an eye on your luggage, Lohan.

Los Angeles International Airport: Home to the celebrity jet-set, the bikini activist, the expensive taxi and that giant semi-circle of sweet rave statues out front. (Stonehenge, for lovers!) Also, less glamorously, host to the most sticky-fingered luggage rummagers of any airport in America, according to a new CBS LA investigation.

Scary stuff. Between January 2002 and April 2010, CBS reports, "LAX had 4,546 claims of items lost or stolen from luggage -- the most of any airport in the nation."

Airport officials are trying to flip that discouraging number into an advertisement for LAX, explaining to reporters that it's "the number one origin and destination airport in the nation and that is why more claims are filed here."

Nice try, guys. But the U.S. government begs to differ: As of 2006, it called JFK airport in New York the busiest international air gateway in the country, by a good margin. So the fact that JFK only saw 3,946 stolen-luggage claims in the same amount of time that LAX saw 4,546 can't be brushed off with an "aww, we're so popular."

(The good news: Those same officials told CBS that their most recent data, for the first four months of 2010, put LAX in third, instead of first, for claims. Let's hope that sticks. But in the long-term, we've got the top spot on lock.)

It's hard to say whether the thefts were at the hands of random criminals or officials, but we can't think of a particular reason why there'd be more petty criminals lurking around our gates than elsewhere.

CBS, for one, is pointing a big fat finger at TSA employees. (As if they didn't already have the worst rap of any uniformed fleet, what with their amateur-porn machines and baby gropage.) Reporters talked to Philip Little, "a security expert who has done a study on LAX and other airports":

Police sources said ... they have been investigating TSA employees and baggage handlers, working separately and together, going through luggage and stealing items in a matter of seconds.
"Thefts occur because we make it easy for people to steal," said [Little].

He said because luggage is constantly on the move -- sometimes in secure areas - it is easy for employees to get away with thefts.

One who did get caught was TSA agent Ryan Driscoll, arrested May 10 at Terminal 6 for investigation of felony grand theft. CBS says security tape caught him pilfering a fistful of jewelry in the baggage screening room. (Security on security -- so meta.) Ominously, Little says: "It's not the question of how many we catch, because occasionally one gets caught, it's how many we don't catch."

Like the agent that L.A. resident Felicia Winningham suspects of stealing her vitamins -- and her two-year-old daughter's Elmo DVDs -- after she handed her bag over for a security check before a recent flight. Tsk, tsk.

We will say this: The Los Angeles city workforce has a reputation for thinking itself above the law, oftentimes committing the same crimes it is tasked with enforcing. By no means are we saying the majority are guilty -- but it's a culture of fraud and self-servitude, no doubt. To begin: Sheriff gangs, LAPD DUIs and school-cop sexual harassment.

[@simone_electra/swilson@laweekly.com]

Tags:

airports, JFK, LAX, luggage, robbers, theft, TSA

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Ncastles

I'm the PR director for LAX and we gave the KCBS reporter the following stats to put his story into perspective -- but he didn't use any of it. The LAX website shows 491,205,931 travelers passed through LAX in the same time period. If you use the airlines' conservative number that 70 percent of all passengers check luggage, then LAX handled 343,844,152 checked bags during that period. So the 4,546 claims were 0.0013 percent of all checked luggage. Also, when you go on the TSA website, LAX hasn't been the top airport for the last five years -- stabilizing in the 3rd and 4th rankis.. And the number of claims at LAX between Jan.-April 2011 is 87. Also, there is a difference between origin-and-destination passengers who start-and-end their trips (and also check and claim their bags) and the nunmber of international passengers (many of whom connect through an airport like JFK.). Is this a serious problem when you look at the statistics? Not for those of us who didn't experience a loss or theft, but it does negaatively impact your experience at LAX. That's why a joint LAPD and LAX Airport Police task force is focused on theft of or/from checked luggage. City of Los Angeles employees do not handle luggage and have not been involved in these thefts. However, it's important passengers don't check valuables in their luggage -- put them in carry-on bags. And, after deplaning, go to the baggage claim quickly so you are there when your bags arrive on the carousel.

Minoru

I think number one in origin and destination are a bit different than being number one in busiest international gateways. Also, seems to me that TSA is becoming the number one scapegoat just for the sake of sensationalism at the hands of irresponsible reporters who have nothing better to do than stack and slant facts for a headline. Shameful.

Anonymous

Please tell me this doesn't surprise anyone. You get a huge, well-funded agency with insane power that hires low-wage frontline staff, and has little to no oversight... yeah, people are going to abuse that.