Security issues

Gerry Berry is a big fan of March Madness. But instead of brackets and basketballs, Berry's March Madness features finding explosives and spotting terrorists.

Berry is president of Covenant Aviation Security, a Winter Springs-based company that provides passenger screening at San Francisco International Airport and nine other airports across the U.S.

Each spring Covenant hosts a tournament-style competition where its employees are challenged to find well-hidden contraband in luggage and identify possible terrorists from stacks of photos. Winners receive as much as $1,500 in cash prizes.

Berry, a retired Marine pilot, says the competition sharpens the skills his employees use in screening some 20 million airline passengers each year.

“It's the best training technique I've ever been involved with,” Berry says.

He says it's also an example of the type of innovation that a private firm can provide to ensure the safety of America.

Covenant and other security companies are at the center of a national debate about who can better provide passenger screenings at the nearly 500 airports across the U.S. — private-sector companies or the Transportation Security Administration.

“The TSA is good at developing procedures, giving guidance and providing oversight,” Berry says. But he notes that an agency that establishes regulations should not perform the operations. “I've always maintained that no one can regulate themselves.”

Congressman John Mica, R-Winter Park, Fla., agrees. In a letter to 200 of the nation's busiest airports, Mica encouraged airport authorities to explore privatization.

“It is both inappropriate and inefficient for the TSA to serve as the administrator, quality assurance regulator, operator and auditor of its own activities,” wrote Mica.

Berry notes that employees at private airport security firms are required to undergo the same training, use the same techniques and operate the same equipment as TSA employees. In his letter, Mica cites a study that indicates private screening crews performed as well as or significantly better than those employed by the TSA.

And the TSA still maintains oversight of private airport security firms.

Most passengers traveling through San Francisco International don't realize that Covenant is providing the security, not the TSA, Berry says.

“We've been at San Francisco for 10 years and the TSA has not had an issue with the security we provide the public,” he says.

He says his company has a higher worker attendance rate and lower employee attrition than the TSA.

Under the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, which created the TSA, airports are allowed to opt out of using the TSA in favor of private companies.

However, the agency has defiantly refused to process new applications. Glacier Park International in Montana submitted an application to privatize in October 2009 and has yet to receive a response from TSA.

And just as officials at Tampa International and Sarasota-Bradenton International were researching privatization, TSA Administrator John Pistole in January said he did not see “any clear or substantial” reason to expand privatization beyond the 16 airports who are part of the Screening Partner Program.

Larry Dale, president and CEO of Orlando Sanford International Airport, plans to challenge Pistole. Dale and the board members of the Sanford Airport Authority have been working for nine months to opt out of using TSA screeners. The airport's application is pending, and this week the board directed Dale to begin negotiating with three companies — Covenant, FirstLine Transportation Security and McNeil Security.

“We're unhappy with the way TSA is doing things,” says Dale.

For instance, Dale says Orlando Sanford International, which is 20 miles north of Orlando, rarely keeps TSA screeners for more than a few months because TSA uses his facility as a training program.

“My board believes the free enterprise system works and wants to go with a private company we can hold directly accountable for security and customer satisfaction,” Dale says.

Dale believes Pistole's stance to discourage Sanford and other airports from opting out of TSA screeners will change.

“Evidently John Pistole doesn't believe in the Constitution. Congress makes the laws — not John Pistole. I'm certain Congressman Mica will remind him of that,” Dale says.