TSA lists 2022’s dumbest contraband ideas
The plan to hide a gun inside a raw chicken was half-baked. The efforts to stuff soiled money inside a pair of crutches stunk, and it was a harebrained idea to try to smuggle drugs inside a scrunchy.
2022 was a year of odd finds at airport security checkpoints, where agents of the Transportation Security Administration screen hundreds of thousands of passengers daily.
The TSA has released its list of the year’s top 10 catches at the nation’s airports, from inert grenades to a peanut-butter-smeared handgun. Los Angeles International Airport, of course, comes in at No. 1.
Passengers are not allowed to bring weapons of any kind, including replicas, into the cabin of a commercial plane. TSA agents are primarily on the lookout for threats to the safety of the plane but will report to local authorities any illegal drugs or other suspicious contraband they come upon.
These TSA discoveries go way beyond a tube of toothpaste exceeding 3.4 ounces.
10. At El Paso International Airport, TSA agents confiscated a pair of crutches stuffed with soiled money.
“It’s hard to imagine someone thinking this idea didn’t stink,” a narrator says in a TSA video announcing the top 10 finds.
9. TSA screeners at Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport found a grenade inside a carry-on bag, prompting them to call the Milwaukee County Sheriff ’s Department’s bomb squad. The grenade was found to be inert and, according to its owner, had been purchased at an air show. 8. Officers found three cattle prods stuffed inside a carryon guitar case at Washington Dulles International Airport. A TSA spokesperson noted that although such items are not allowed in a
carry-on — for obvious reasons — the passenger was allowed to repack them into a checked bag.
7. At Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, TSA agents spotted a handgun that had been hidden in a PlayStation console. The console was flagged when the officer said she didn’t see a mass of computer parts in the game system when it was X-rayed, the agency said in a statement.
“A gun looked to be artfully concealed,” Officer Theodosia White, who spotted it, said.
6. At Idaho’s Boise Airport, officers discovered drugs hidden inside hair scrunchies.
5. At Virginia’s Richmond International Airport, a passenger was flagged when TSA officers detected a double-blade knife hidden inside the casing of a laptop.
An officer spotted the knife in the X-ray but was unable to find it in the carryas on bag, according to the agency. It wasn’t until each item was checked and run through the X-ray again that officers were able to determine that it had been hidden in the laptop.
4. A man going through security at New York’s Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport told officers he had forgotten that he had stuffed a loaded 9-millimeter handgun inside a medical sling he was using, according to a spokesperson. The man was detained by local law enforcement.
3. In the midst of the busy holiday travel season, a TSA officer at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport decided to inspect a passenger’s two jars of peanut butter. Officers found a disassembled handgun inside. The parts, including a magazine loaded with ammo, had been wrapped in plastic, TSA officials said.
TSA notes that firearms can be transported as long they have the proper permit and are properly packaged. That includes making sure guns are unloaded and transported in the belly of the plane.
2. TSA agents had to do a deeper inspection of a raw chicken being transported at Florida’s Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. They found a wrapped handgun stuffed inside. “This idea wasn’t even half-baked; it was raw,” TSA officials said in an Instagram post at the time.
1. LAX topped the list when TSA officers called the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s narcotics bureau Oct. 19 after they discovered about 12,000 fentanyl pills hidden inside candy boxes and bags. The suspect tried to go through TSA screening with the drugs disguised as candy and snacks, according to the Sheriff’s Department.
When the pills were spotted, the suspect f led the area before he could be detained but was later identified.