Forget about catching terrorists. This airport security agent was too busy catching some Z's.
The Transportation Security Administration worker was put on desk duty after she was spotted sleeping in plain sight at LaGuardia Airport - the latest black eye for the federal agency.
Brooklyn traveler Bucky Turco said he had just arrived at his departure gate on Sunday when he saw the uniformed worker snoozing in a chair, head resting in her hand.
"I was shocked," Turco, 35, said, of the 8:15 a.m. encounter. "I've never seen a Department of Homeland Security official sleeping inside an airport."
Turco, 35, snapped a photo of the worker, who woke up about 10 minutes later during an announcement that the Frontier Airlines flight to Denver was boarding, he said.
After rising from her seat, the groggy employee immediately joined her colleagues who were performing secondary security checks at the gate, Turco said.
Turco was flummoxed by what he witnessed.
"In light of their recent follies, it just seemed that a federal agency beleaguered by bad news of late should probably worry about their image a little more," said Turco, founder and editor-in-chief of the counter-culture magazine Animal.
"To be fair, she could have been on a break. But you don't go to a precinct and see a police officer sleeping at their desk."
Turco posted the picture on his Web site. Someone sent a link to TSA officials Tuesday and the worker was immediately interviewed, an agency spokeswoman said.
The guard was put on desk duty pending the outcome of an investigation.
"We recognize that our officers have very demanding jobs that require constant vigilance and hours on their feet," TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis said.
"But nonetheless, it was completely inappropriate for her to rest in a public area while on her break as opposed to a nearby break room." (source)
Damn, and here all this time I thought New York was the city that never sleeps. This makes the second incident like this in the last few weeks. Recently I wrote a piece featuring a female correctional officer at Rikers Island who was caught sleeping on the job by one of her co-workers [read it here]. Her co-worker found it so funny that she was asleep on the job, that he decided to take pictures of her with a prisoner posing next to her. Now in that incident, though clearly against policy, it was revealed that the woman had worked seventy hours of overtime that month. In that story I hated the perception they gave of her as a single mom when they referenced her as "the 'Precious' of the Department of Corrections."
Too bad the same cannot be said for this one because, well, this woman was actually on break; yep, save those lazy Negro lines for someone else. If there was a designated break area or room, then that's where she should have been. When you have "certain people" traveling with bombs in their underwear on airplanes. The last thing needed is for a TSA employee to be seen asleep at the wheel so to speak. Too bad she wasn't as fortunate as myself to have a private office with a huge walk-in closet at 8:15am after those hard nights on the town. Something tells me that she may be underpaid and overworked as are many people who work for the government in those "important" jobs.
