"Pilfering of checked luggage is on the rise"

Wednesday, August 18, 2004

Pilfering of checked luggage is on the rise  
By Joe Sharkey
The New York (NY) Times


Ralph Roosevelt declared, "They're back into taking things out of your
luggage." Roosevelt, a business traveler from Marshfield, Massachusetts,
said Monday that he had arrived home Sunday night from a trip to Florida and
found a pricey pair of sunglasses missing from the bag he had checked on his
flight.

"I don't usually check a bag on a flight from Florida, but the plane was
jammed, so I did," he said. "I put my sunglasses in the checked bag, on top,
and they were missing when I got home. They were Serengeti sunglasses, which
you pay about $110 for at Wal-Mart."

Roosevelt, the managing director of a food distribution and marketing
company called RGI International, said that he and other frequent business
travelers he knew were becoming annoyed by what they believed was increasing
pilferage from checked luggage at airports.

Roosevelt said that he had reported theft from his luggage on three
occasions in the last year, and suspected it on others.

There has always been a certain amount of theft from checked bags at
airports. But the problem became more complicated in 2002, when a federal
security requirement went into effect that all checked bags be subject to
inspection by screeners employed by the Transportation Security
Administration.

Every day, millions of checked bags are now opened for inspection at the
airport, while millions more are left unopened but checked electronically
for possible explosives. Bags that are opened by federal screeners are
placed back into the custody of an airline's regular baggage handlers, a
procedure that authorities say makes it difficult to determine when or where
any theft occurred, and whether the airline or the federal government is
liable.

Reports of thefts from baggage have been accelerating lately. Last week,
after a lengthy sting operation at La Guardia and Kennedy airports in New
York, the authorities said they had arrested four Transportation Security
Administration baggage screeners on charges of stealing items from checked
bags. The sting began after two airlines reported complaints from customers,
including the entertainers Joan Rivers, Chevy Chase and Susan Lucci.

The authorities charged the four with stealing cash as well as jewelry,
watches or pens from checked bags.

In June, 13 agency employees at Louis Armstrong Airport in New Orleans were
arrested on charges of stealing valuables from luggage.

Officials said the thefts were captured by video-camera surveillance after a
co-worker reported what the screeners were doing.

A few weeks before, after an informant set a monthlong sting in motion, four
federal screeners at the Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport in
Florida were charged with stealing jewelry, electronic equipment and other
valuables from checked bags.

"We found that the majority of times when screeners are caught is after
colleagues of theirs have gone to management" to report suspected illegal
activity, said Ann Davis, a spokeswoman for the agency.

When wrongdoing is reported, "we are going to look into it and, if
necessary, encourage the law enforcement agencies at the airports to look
into it," she said, adding that "a handful" of baggage thieves "really do a
disservice to the 45,000 screeners who protect us every day with
professionalism and integrity."

>From the time when the agency assumed responsibility for airport screening
in 2002 through mid-July, it received about 28,400 claims for loss from or
damage to checked bags, she said.

She did not have figures for how many claims had been settled for checked
bags.

At security checkpoints, where hand-held bags are screened, the agency has
approved or settled 2,900 claims at an average of $181.68 each, she said.
Another 2,100 claims have been denied and about 2,700 are pending, she said.

Roosevelt said he traveled about 100,000 miles, or 160,000 kilometers, a
year on business domestically and internationally. "I guess they go through
the bag and whatever is on top is the easiest to take," he said.

"I'd get home from a trip and after a few days, I'd say, 'Hey, where's that
nice sweater I had?'

"And I also noticed my supply of white shirts - Brooks Brothers, Ralph
Lauren - was getting smaller in my closet when I'd go to pack. So I'm seeing
my shirt supply dwindling. What are you supposed to do when someone swipes
your shirt?"


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