A man tries to set fire to plastic explosive in his shoes, so long queues form (in airports) for people to remove their shoes.
Intelligence comes in about liquid / gel / paste explosives, so now those long queues have to abandon any liquids / gels / pastes in bins, near those long queues, inside an airport. Those "potential explosives" are not allowed on a plane, but are allowed to be left for hours (days?) near lots of people in an airport.
Cops have generalist training that can be used across a wide variety of situations where you have to think on your feet. It would be a waste of that training to just chain it to a scanner week-in, week-out.
He meant the other way around. Train the TSA agents to be cops instead and have them do actual police duty instead of hanging around airports being annoying obstacles for travelers.
The TSA _are_ deterring crimes. Drug related crimes (possession) has gone up substantially at airports, and there are known cases of credit card fraud, animal smuggling and child porn being found while searching belongings of travelers.
Whether or not you think that the TSA should be involved in anything past securing the ability for persons to travel is the question.
Somehow it seems to have worked OK judging by results. See my separate comment about 106 million flights since 9/11/01 without any successful terrorist attacks.
