A security breach at Kennedy International Airport allowed 11 passengers to walk through a TSA checkpoint Monday without being screened, the New York Daily News reports.
TSA officials left the checkpoint with the magnetometer and x-ray machine unattended, law enforcement sources told the Daily News. A security camera recorded the passengers walking through the screening lane, setting off the metal detector three times.
Worse yet, TSA agents didn’t notify police about the incident until two hours later. And despite law enforcement flooding the airport looking for the passengers, they were not found.
“What you have is 11 people, unscreened, who boarded unknown flights to unknown destinations,” a law enforcement source told the Daily News. “This is the failure of the TSA to do its job.”
The source said that the TSA tried to first use its own security guards to handle the situation, rather than going to police, which is a “violation of all the protocols.”
The TSA said it was “confident” the security breach posed “no threat to the aviation transportation system.”
“TSA works with a network of security layers both seen and unseen,” the agency said in statement. “Once our review is complete, TSA will discipline and retrain the employees as appropriate.”