Security Forces for 9/11 Airports

Essay by calsouthpoleUniversity, Bachelor'sA-, June 2007

download word file, 3 pages 3.0

The concept that I have chosen comes from one of the concepts discussed in chapter 16 of the reading. The concept is of standard operating procedures (Handel, 2003, p.181) and how they work or do not work in everyday life. In doing the reading I was struck by the idea of how many organizations use standard operating procedures or rules that have been established in order to take the guesswork out of problem solving. There are many organizations that utilize this technique but one that sticks out for me is the United States Government. Many of our laws are basically standard operating procedures. Another example that came to mind was airport security in a post 9/11 society. There have been many incidents in the news in the past few years since Homeland Security began creating different policies to try to make air travel safer. There was the incident where a man tried to smuggle a bomb in his shoe.

Thus, the rule that everyone must remove their shoes at the security checkpoint was established. Then the man who tried to bring liquid explosive material aboard creating one of the more recent rules that no liquids could be brought aboard a plane. What happens with these rules though, is that while they are created with the right intentions they are so black and white that when "gray" situations arise there is no other way to handle them. There is no such thing as a gray area when it comes to the airport security rules. This was the case a few weeks ago when a woman and her toddler were traveling and she was asked to empty her child's drink container of water because it could not be brought onto the plane with liquid in it. What were the chances that...