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Is that your lugging ticking?
Somewhere
on the Internet is a web site called “The Darwin Awards”. As
I recall these are examples of some of the stupid things
that humans do in the course of our lives. I don’t have time
to recite some of their examples, but trust me, if you ever
look them up or run across them, you’ll wonder if people can
really be this dumb.
I am here to tell you that, yes they can be.
Take for example this latest piece of news from France. It
seems the airport police at the Charles De Gaulle airport
wanted to test their security systems using their sniffer
dogs. The exercise was to plant a small amount of real
explosive material in a piece of luggage and then have the
dogs search for it and hopefully find it. This sounds
reasonable and certainly worthwhile, doesn’t it?
However this is where the plan goes somewhat off kilter. The
police officers place the real explosives in the bag of some
unsuspecting tourist without making a note of who owned the
bag or where the bag was headed. I suspect by now, you are
beginning to see what is going to happen.
Yes, friends, in the words of Mr. Zenon Murphy…”Anything
that can go wrong…will go wrong.” Or something to that
effect…perhaps said by Murphy in his famous “Murphy’s Law”.
Anyway, so the French airport police put a package of
explosives inside of some unsuspecting tourist’s luggage,
send it down the belt to see if the bomb sniffing dogs can
find it, and when the dogs overlook it, the bag gets sent
out to a plane headed… for where? They have no idea.
As I said they didn’t make a note of who owned the bag or
where the bag might be going. Airport officials admit that
there were over 100 flights leaving during this time frame
and the bag could have been placed on any of these. “Not to
worry,” said one of the officials…since “There wasn’t anyway
for the explosives to go off since there wasn’t a detonator
of any sort attached.”
Isn’t that comforting? Gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling
doesn’t it?
The possibility of the explosives going off isn’t a real
threat as far as I’m concerned. What would scare the dickens
out of me and should be of some concern to all involved is
the possibility of some little old lady from Pasadena owning
the piece of luggage and then going through another airport
somewhere in the world where the dogs might be a little bit
more experienced. Imagine what is going to happen to her
when the dogs sniff out a bomb in her luggage lying in
between her Depends, Ben Gay and Fix-O-Dent. It boggles the
mind, doesn’t it? I think we can all see what can happen in
this situation. Some little old lady being led out of the
airport in handcuffs, being photographed and labeled as a
terrorist threat to our country. Television reporters go
wild trying to dig up everything on her from the time she
was born until the present. Everything about her past would
be subject to intense scrutiny. That wild tennis instructor
from Des Moines that she dated one summer at the lake would
be interviewed on Larry King and asked if he could see any
indication of terrorist behavior back in 1918. It would make
a great movie.
This is a lawsuit waiting to happen. A plaintiff’s law
firm’s dream. This would be the el primo case for some lucky
firm and their partners.
So
what is my solution? Glad you asked.
Perhaps this is a little bit simplistic, but considering the
fact that we believe dogs are colorblind, why not use a big
red bag with super large letters on it saying something
like…”Police…Do Not Touch”? I mean the last I heard, dogs
can’t read, so what would be the harm? It’s not like some
obvious color or some wording would tip the dogs off that
they were being tested, would it? I mean, if dogs can’t tell
which bag is real and which one is a test, it isn’t likely
that they will point to the bag and talk (or bark) among
themselves, is it?
If this wasn’t an option then how about something as simple
as writing down the name of the person whose bag they were
using as well as their flight number? How difficult is this?
Did I mention that this happened in France?
Go figure.
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