TSA and Community Policing

A lot of individual errors seem to make the biggest impact on the most recent terrorist attack on Delta airline. The Nigerian security clearly missed the boat; then the Dutch missed it again; then while he was on our "watch" list of 550,000 - we didn't notice him headed to the US; then we ignored his dad's warning about him given to our US embassy in Nigeria; and we didn't place him on the "no fly list" of 3,400 - any one of these were options for catching and stopping him. Any one would have averted the attack. Finally, what saved that airline full of people - was what most police have known for years - they make it easy to participate in their own community policing - they acted like an involved community and caught him trying to ignite the explosive.
Who knows, perhaps there were a lot of warning signs that he gave before he started the attack - and perhaps we will hear about citizens who may have noticed a problem early in one of his flights - but we still do not encourage citizens to step forward - we still do not protect them from false allegations. We still do not protect them from fellow passengers.
LESSON: Ultimately, until we fully involve the community in its own protection, we will be plagued by series of opportunities to stop terrorists, but we will make many small mistakes again that will add up to allowing a disaster to happen. We were very lucky this time.