By Noel E. Oman
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — If you happen to be at the state’s largest airport, chances are there are a couple of people watching you and you likely won’t even notice.
If you are having a bad day, they’ll spot the visual cues that will give you away. They won’t know why you’re having a bad day until they either detect another visual cue or question you and, most likely, send you on your way.
The people watching are behavior detection officers for the U.S. Transportation Security Administration at Little Rock National Airport, Adams Field. They are trained to look for suspicious behaviors that will identify dangerous people.
Johnn and Mason, whose last names were not disclosed by the Transportation Security Administration to protect their identities, roam the airport looking out for tell-tale signs of troubling behavior among the hundreds of passengers and other visitors who course through the terminal daily.
On a recent day, they stationed themselves near the passenger screening area on the terminal’s second floor leading to the concourse. Johnn chatted amiably with passengers displaying their tickets and driver’s licenses to another Transportation Security Administration agent before going through the screening. Mason stood a few yards back, at once watching for a signal from Johnn and looking over other passengers.
“We interact with passengers on a daily basis,” said Johnn, 46, a former paramedic who also worked for several years in a psychiatric hospital.
“If someone is acting unusual in line, they look whether it’s something unusual or the fact they have three children,” added Jerry Henderson, the top Transportation Security Administration official in Arkansas. “Does their behavior rise above the base-line norm? Is it something readily apparent or is it something else that they need to investigate.” The norms change almost daily, according to Johnn and Mason. If it is spring break, they adjust the behavior norms to the fact that an unusual number of students will be flying that week. If a flight is canceled, again they adjust the behavioral norms.
“Each group has their own set of base line norms,” Johnn said.
Though they have undergone training, behavior detection can only tell the officers so much.
“There is no formula for terrorist behavior, just like there is no template of specific behaviors that are always associated with specific crimes,” acknowledges Sari Koshetz, a Transportation Security Administration spokesman. “But there are reliable indicators of anomalous behaviors based on scientific research and empirical data that indicate the fear of discovery.
“This fear of discovery causes a body to elicit certain behavioral cues.” Johnn and Mason, 27, who also is a member of the Arkansas Air National Guard, have undergone the training to master identifying those cues.
“Behavior detection class was much harder than my paramedic training and much more intense,” Johnn said.
Nationwide, behavior detection officers are deployed at 161 airports. In the fiscal year ending Sept. 20, behavior detection officers referred 69,612 passengers for additional screening, which resulted in 6,114 referrals to law enforcement officers and 530 arrests, according to Koshetz.
Program proponents say the behavior detection officers’ training allows them to single out people based on specific behaviors that Johnn noted are “inherent to the entire human population” rather than singling out people based on appearance, race, ethnicity or religion.
“It’s not profiling,” Henderson said. “It’s observed behavior.” The American Civil Liberties Union, among others, disagrees with that view.
“Our main objections are practicality and fairness,” said Jay Stanley, public education director for the American Civil Liberties Union technology and liberty program. “We have a lot of questions about the effectiveness.” The problem, in Stanley’s view, is that the behavioral cues are “common behaviors we all engage from time to time for any number of reasons: Being nervous, upset, not wanting to look someone in the eye.
“Often what’s happening is if ethnic and minorities show these behaviors, they get picked up.” Stanley declined to say if the ACLU would challenge the program in court. But he added: “I would never would want to foreclose the possibility there are constitutional violations.” Other factors about the program may loom larger.
“Obviously, in public, a police officer can observe other people in public,” Stanley said. “Whether it makes sense as a way to spend our limited security resources in an attempt to scrutinize someone’s behavior in the 1-in-1-billion chance they prevent a terrorist attack is another question.” But program proponents say it is just another tool that can be used to add an element of unpredictability to the security screening process. It also doesn’t require special equipment. And the officers can be deployed easily to other modes of transportation.
Further, behavior detection officers often can spot potential trouble before it reaches the passenger screening area, where that trouble can cause delays in passengers getting to their flights.
“It pushes our layer of security out and away from the checkpoint,” Henderson said.
He cited a case last year at Little Rock National in which someone approached the passenger screening area with a gun inside his boot. His behavior was picked up before he reached the area, he was set aside for additional screening and the gun was found.
“He would’ve got caught anyway,” Koshetz said. “What’s interesting is that they picked it up even before he even got to the X-ray machines. It was pre-emptive.”
Copyright 2009 Little Rock Newspapers, Inc.