(Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune) TSA K9 handler Thomas Scott gives some love to Benny, one of the new passenger screening canines, at the Salt Lake International Airport Tuesday March 8. "Benny", a golden retriever sniffs at luggage as airline passengers pass by before the security checkpoint in terminal 1. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is beginning to use the dogs, which are specially trained to detect explosives and explosive components.
Security checkpoints at Salt Lake City International Airport are handling far more travelers this year — but wait times remain about the same, even though the Transportation Security Administration has not really added any officers.
How is TSA managing to do that? Largely by going to the dogs.
“One of the ways we’ve become more efficient and effective is the K-9 program that we instituted a little over a year ago here,” Mark Lewis, Utah’s acting federal security director with the TSA, told the airport advisory board on Wednesday as he outlined some security changes happening or coming to the airport.
He explained that the airport now has four K-9 teams with dogs trained to sniff out explosives.
“It goes very fast” when the dogs are working, Lewis said. The dogs essentially become living explosives trace-detection machines that may be used without touching people.
“If someone kicks the dog or the handler it is an assault.”<br> — Mark Lewis
But humans are sometimes causing problems, especially a few who are afraid of dogs.
“We’ve actually had passengers threaten the dogs, and the dog handlers,” Lewis said. So far, they have only been idle threats. But they have happened often enough that Lewis said he talked to the U.S. attorney about what legal action could be taken if actions escalate.
“Threatening is one thing, but if someone kicks the dog or the handler,” he said, “it is an assault.
Still, he said such problems are rare. “Our biggest challenge is to keep people from petting the dogs,” despite signs, plus notices on vests the dogs wear asking passengers not to do so.
The dog teams are helping TSA keep up with an increase in passengers that went from 4.1 million during the first six months of last year to 4.7 million this year.
That is about 2,200 more passengers a day, Lewis said.
Even so, “The longest wait time we’ve had reported this summer is about 25 minutes. Generally, it is much lower than that,” Lewis said. “The wait times have not increased significantly.”
He adds that TSA is fully staffed with 450 officers at the airport. In the past, it would add people seasonally, but Lewis said the agency now just adjusts using overtime.
Passengers soon will see some changes coming to security checkpoints and operations, Lewis added.
Sometime before the end of the year, travelers in standard TSA checkpoint lines will need to remove all electronics larger than cellphones from carry-on bags and place them in a separate bin with nothing else above or below for X-ray screening. Travelers in Precheck lanes will be able to leave electronics in their bags as they now do with laptops.
Lewis said that change is happening at all U.S. airports, but is happening at different times depending on when training of officers is completed.
With that change, TSA will soon also have more officers coaching people about what they must remove from carry-on bags.
“In standard lanes right now, there’s one person up front for every two lanes. There will now be one officer for every lane,” he said.
Lewis also noted that the number of firearms found at checkpoints remains relatively constant and high in Salt Lake City, despite efforts to warn and remind people to double-check what they are bringing on.
“It happens frequently here,” he said. “Two years ago we put up signs that literally had guns with a slash through it in the checkpoint queue and on the X-ray.”
He said when one passenger with a gun was asked if he saw the sign, he responded. “I saw the sign but I forgot that I had my gun with me.”
Lewis said, “That’s usually what they say: I forgot I had it with me. That number [of firearms seized] is not decreasing, and nationwide it’s increasing significantly.” He noted that the fine for a first offense is up to $7,500.
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