The Department of Justice has stopped random Drug Enforcement Administration passenger searches "mass transportation facilities," such as airports, as of Thursday, after the department's inspector general found concerns with how such searches were being conducted. Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz's office said, in a press release, that the "DEA was not complying with its own policy on consensual encounters conducted at mass transportation facilities. This resulted in DEA and DEA Task Force Group personnel creating potentially significant operational and legal risks." Two reasons were laid out in the release: a suspension of required training and a failure to complete paperwork for "consensual encounters."  The OIG noted the documentation was critical to "help the DEA assess whether its consensual encounter activities are an efficient and effective use of law enforcement resources and whether there is evidence of racial profiling in its use of these activities." On the second point, the IG's office cited an instance in Cincinnati in July, which was recorded on video and posted online. There, a traveler refused to consent to a DEA search. That prompted the DEA Task Force Officer to take the passenger's bag after saying that consent wasn’t required for the search. A DEA dog "alerted to the bag." While the passenger ultimately agreed to a search, nothing was found in the carry-on bag. The passenger missed their flight as a result of the search. The OIG further noted this traveler had been picked because an airline employee was tipping off the DEA Task Force Group about passengers who purchased last-minute flights (within 48 hours of travel), and the employee was receiving cash benefits in return. “The OIG learned that the DEA had been paying this employee a percentage of forfeited cash seized by the DEA office from passengers at the local airport when the seizure resulted from information the employee had provided to the DEA. The employee had received tens of thousands of dollars from the DEA over the past several years,” the DOJ’s management directive read. The OIG also said that the lack of adequate policies, guidance, training, and data collection creates “substantial risks that DEA Special Agents and Task Force Officers will conduct these activities improperly; impose unwarranted burdens on, and violate the legal rights of, innocent travelers; imperil the Department’s asset forfeiture and seizure activities; and waste law enforcement resources on ineffective interdiction actions.”