Was this a massive failure of common sense or a bureacratic snafu over who was in charge? My money is on both. In a news story carried by the Chronicle today, we learn that the TSA let a man with bomb components and modified shoes board a flight at Hobby — because an HPD officer said so. In what has to be an example of the chronic short-handedness of HPD, the officer has (so far) only been transferred to a desk job, and predictably, both sides are pointing fingers at each other:

Although the FBI eventually cleared the man of wrongdoing, police officials have transferred the officer involved and are investigating the incident while insisting that the TSA, not police, has the authority to keep a suspicious person from boarding a flight.

TSA spokeswoman Andrea McCauley said screeners have the authority to stop people from going beyond the checkpoint to the boarding areas, but they rely heavily on local police.

“It’s just agencies talking with each other,” Ready said, downplaying the disagreement.

One suspects the talking is being done in loud tones, involves name-calling, and is accompanied by fists banging on tables. So what happened?

The report states that a man with a Middle Eastern name and a ticket for a Delta Airlines flight to Atlanta shook his head when screeners asked if he had a laptop computer in his baggage, but an X-ray machine operator detected a laptop.

A search of the man’s baggage revealed a clock with a 9-volt battery taped to it and a copy of the Quran, the report said. A screener examined the man’s shoes and determined that the “entire soles of both shoes were gutted out.”

No explosive material was detected, the report states. A police officer was summoned and questioned the man, examined his identification, shoes and the clock, then cleared him for travel, according to the report.

A TSA screener disagreed with the officer, saying “the shoes had been tampered with and there were all the components of (a bomb) except the explosive itself,” the report says.

The officer retorted, “I thought y’all were trained in this stuff,” TSA officials reported.

The report says the TSA screener notified Delta Airlines and talked again with the officer, who said he had been unable to check the passenger’s criminal background because of computer problems.

I suppose that someone might take a small battery-powered alarm clock with them on a trip, but why gut the soles of your shoes? I guess what this means is that so as long as you have an accomplice pre-position the explosive and the police can’t check their computer, you can take all sorts of bomb apparatus on board an airplane in Houston. But here’s the capper:

Meanwhile the officer involved in the dispute, J.O. Reece, has been transferred to a desk job, “the same place they send officers who are relieved of duty,” said Chad Hoffman, attorney for the Houston Police Officers Union.

Hoffman said Reece doesn’t understand why he was transferred “when it seems clear from the onset of the investigation that he didn’t have probable cause to detain anybody and that his actions were consistent with the law and HPD policy.”

First, I should think that this idiot would be relieved of duty. Put him somewhere that he doesn’t have to make a decision affecting people’s safety, because he obviously lacks the judgement to to put common sense over some kind of poorly written policy. And on that score, I have only one question:

Did ex-chief Sam Nuchia write that policy too?