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First New Federal Agents on Duty at McCarran

LAS VEGAS -- The first federally hired and trained security agents took their places at checkpoints leading to the D-gates concourse at McCarran International Airport just after midnight Tuesday, a step local aviation officials believe will significantly improve passenger security at the nation's seventh busiest airport.

"We're very serious about security at McCarran, and I'm totally convinced in the enthusiasm, dedication and patriotism of these (new) employees," said Jim Blair, the airport's federal security director.

Dressed in uniforms emblazoned with a Transportation Security Administration logo, the airport's 383 new screeners are scheduled to work alongside a team of 75 experienced screeners over the next two weeks. Once they have completed a required 60 hours of on-the-job training, the new federal employees will gradually replace private sector employees of Wackenhut Corp. at other airport checkpoints, Blair said.

Blair did not set a target date for filling McCarran's approximately 750 federal screener positions, although he said it will comply with a federal deadline requiring the nation's 429 passenger airports to use such employees at all passenger checkpoints by Nov. 19.

A second group of about 200 federal screeners is scheduled to begin work at McCarran next week, Blair said. In addition, 26 workers now training rookie screeners will remain in Las Vegas as full-time TSA employees once their training wraps up.

"We have our nucleus in place," Blair said. Clark County Deputy Director of Aviation Rosemary Vassiliadis called the new employees' arrival "a key milestone" in McCarran's history, although she cautioned passengers that checkpoint wait times could increase slightly while screeners are trained. However, Vassiliadis said she expects those delays to diminish once the workers become more accustomed to their assignments.

While airport and TSA officials praised the new hires, some passengers remained unimpressed.

"Who is screening doesn't make a bit of difference to us," said Kathy Galante, a Rochester, N.Y., resident who was scheduled to fly home Tuesday on an American Airlines flight. "Will (security) be any better? How much will these new screeners let through? That's all we care about."

In recent weeks, McCarran's security procedures have been nationally criticized after front-page articles in USA Today and the New York Daily News chronicled widespread breaches at the airport's passenger checkpoints. Undercover journalists and law enforcement officers easily smuggled knives, box cutters and other weapons past airport personnel, the publications reported.

Blair declined comment on past incidents but said he believes added training given to federal employees will improve the effectiveness of McCarran's security procedures, which have been handled by Wackenhut since late April.

"Effective Sept. 17, our job is to make things better," Blair said. "We've given (TSA screeners) five times more training than they received (under private contractors), and that training will continue into the future."

So far, however, Blair said no persons employed by Wackenhut have been hired for similar federal positions at McCarran.

Melendez said TSA's assessment center placed first priority on the evaluation of outside job candidates to minimize turnover among current Wackenhut employees. Once more federal screeners are in place, current Wackenhut employees would be evaluated for employment, said TSA spokesman Nico Melendez.

"(The lack of hiring current screeners) is not an indictment of (Wackenhut's) past history at McCarran," Blair said. "We value those people who have been working at our checkpoints and hope to add many of them to the TSA team once they've been cleared by the assessment center."

An employee assessment center operated on behalf of TSA received nearly 12,000 applications for positions at McCarran, Melendez said. The jobs pay between $23,600 to $35,400 plus locality pay, depending upon a person's position and experience, Blair said.

Aleysi Velasco, a 21-year-old former casino kitchen worker who was hired as a screener, said she's looking forward to the challenge of dealing with her share of the estimated 18,000 to 20,000 outbound passengers who pass through checkpoints on their way to the D-gates each day.

"It's a challenging job, but I feel like I'm making a difference to protect my country," Velasco said.

McCarran was one of nine U.S. passenger airports to welcome its first federal screeners Tuesday. It became the nation's 102nd airport to deploy federal screeners.

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