10
Apr
According to Congressman Duncan US federal air marshals are more likely to be arrested than make an arrest.
“Actually, there have been many more arrests of Federal air marshals than that story reported, quite a few for felony offenses. In fact, more air marshals have been arrested than the number of people arrested by air marshals.
We now have approximately 4,000 in the Federal Air Marshals Service, yet they have made an average of just 4.2 arrests a year since 2001. This comes out to an average of about one arrest a year per 1,000 employees.
Now, let me make that clear. Their thousands of employees are not making one arrest per year each. They are averaging slightly over four arrests each year by the entire agency. In other words, we are spending approximately $200 million per arrest. Let me repeat that: we are spending approximately $200 million per arrest.”
With each FAM (Federal Air Marshal) flying 900 hours a year, this is one arrest per almost a million flight hours at a cost of around $200 per hour!
I agree with the Congressman – FAMs are a terrible waste of money and completely ineffectual and unproductive as a security measure.
Mary Jo said,
I wonder if this arrest number changes (and if so, how significantly) if statistics included arrest assists. There’s always a bit of scrapping between agencies about who gets the “collar” and mid-air jurisdiction can be dicey. I’d be interested to know if Air Marshals have assisted in situations that led to a substantial number of arrests by other law enforcement agencies.
The Global Traveller said,
Nice point, but it can go both ways. If a FAM assists an arrest made on the ground is that included in the stats?
Perhaps another way of looking at it is the 4 arrests per year by FAMs are much less than the number of arrests on arrival where crew have detained a passenger during the flight? Heck I see a few of those a year just on my flights.
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