TSA Bloodies Disabled Brain Tumor Patient
We pay for this
I hate the TSA. HATE. My disdain for the tax-payer funded, blue-gloved, theater players has been well documented throughout the years.
This though… this is a new low.
Last summer, 19-year old Hannah was headed home from her last brain tumor treatment when she set off a metal detector at a TSA security checkpoint in Memphis. What should have been a celebration resulted in a night in jail.
Her parents have filed suit.
WREG reports:
It’s a trip they’ve made for 17 years.
This time, an unarmed Hannah, set off the metal detector at a security checkpoint
“They wanted to do further scanning, she was reluctant, she didn’t understand what they were about to do,” said her mother Shirley Cohen.
Cohen told us she tried to tell TSA agents her daughter is partially deaf, blind in one eye, paralyzed, and easily confused, but said she was kept at a distance by police.
“She’s trying to get away from them but in the next instant, one of them had her down on the ground and hit her head on the floor. There was blood everywhere,” said Cohen.
Hannah was arrested, booked and on the night she should have been celebrating the end of her treatment, she was locked up in Jail East.
“Here we were with nowhere to go, not even a toothbrush, our bags had gone to Chattanooga,” said Cohen.
Authorities later threw out the charges but the family filed a lawsuit against the Memphis Airport, Airport Police, and the Transportation Security Administration.
None of them would comment citing the suit, but Sari Koshetz of TSA released a statement that said, “Passengers can call ahead of time to learn more about the screening process for their particular needs or medical situation.”
Cohen said after all the help here, she can’t believe it ended like this.
The TSA was a post-9/11 reaction, one its creator has since worked to undo. Their job is to stop or mitigate threats of terrorism — something they’ve not done. But they’ve gotten pretty good at harassing law abiding citizens in the name of security.
And we pay for this.
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Comments
“Passengers can call ahead of time to learn more about the screening process for their particular needs or medical situation.”
Translation: It’s their own fault! TSA agents can’t be expected to listen to frightened people or otherwise show common sense! Bow shut up! It’s break time.
In a perverse way… it is their fault.
On the rare occasion I fly, it’s also my fault that I get molested… because I agreed to fly.
When I visit friends/family a state or 6 away… I pack up the family in the car and go for a drive.
It’s not practical for all situations/people for sure… but it ensures that none of us get molested/humiliated/etc… and it’s a shame that these need to be considerations.
So we peasants can call ahead to get the special instructions on how to use our right of free travel.
Just take a moment and think about how close that is to “Papers Please!”
Good grief! Every story we hear is worse. It certainly wouldn’t have done any good to call ahead for this. They’ve been making this trip for 17 years and it’s come to this. Glad it was her last treatment!
If she has to go back I’d dress her in a headbag and full-length black shroud and pass her off as a Muslim. I understand they waltz right through TSA checkpoints with no harassment.
This is what ALWAYS happens when we create government bureaucracy. It becomes bloated. It loses it’s focus. It FAILS to do it’s job. And then the government employee union attitude takes over and it becomes FUCK YOU LITTLE PEONS, WE WILL TELL YOU! And then these “public servants” drain the public coffers with their salaries and their benefits and their endless pensions after 20 years and double dipping. It’s disgusting and it needs to end. Article V… cut the nuts out of the bloated, rutting feral hog that is the Feral, errr Federal, Government.
So, the overrated bunch of mall security guards heard a metal detector go off, which I am sure happens dozens of times a day at least. So the response of the jackbooted thugs is to surround a young lady who anyone with half a brain can tell has issues and scare the crap out of her and then slam her to the ground.
I tell you one thing, if that had been my loved on I would still be in jail and at least one or two of those thugs would be on medical leave.
I have set off metal detectors at least a dozen times since 9/11 and not once have they done anything but ask me to step forward and used the wand on me and then let me go. I never consent to the scanner. But then again I am not a poor defenseless young lady either.
Fascist do what fascist do….and fuck you GWBush
Barack Obama is the current President of the United States, and has been since January 20, 2009.
If this happened to Ahmed the clock boy, he’d be invited by President Obama to sleep over at the White House for a year.
I know it’s probably too much to ask, but is there any watchdog group that could hound the TSA until all those involved are fired?
I know … it’s just fantasy thinking.
You might be fired as a waiter from a restaurant for occasionally screwing up people’s dinner orders, but assault and jail a disabled girl while refusing to listen to her mother and your own conscience and common sense??
Maybe a negative comment on your next review? That’s probably the worst you could expect to happen to these incompetent morons.
“Passengers can call ahead of time to learn more about the screening process for their particular needs or medical situation.”
In other words, spend half a day—at least—trying to get to some recorded message that has some tenuous bit of relevance to your concern … and then come and get assaulted anyway.
What a horrible joke.
Stop this expensive Kabuki performance which inconveniences and, in some cases such as this one, actually hurts innocent people, and start doing something which actually works—such as Israeli-style profiling.
As a practical matter, I don’t think we can do ‘Israeli-style profiling’. The volume of traffic is too high. We have a Bill of Rights. You don’t think the Israelis sometimes make mistakes and take the wrong person to the ground?
Personally, I just signed up for TSA Precheck. I am curious to see if it makes a difference. I gather that you might think that is an imposition on you. But the Israelis require you to fill out a lot more paperwork before you get to fly with them.
“The volume of traffic is too high.”
You mean we have many more flights per capita than the Israelis?
“You don’t think the Israelis sometimes make mistakes and take the wrong person to the ground?”
I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. But, if they do, I’d bet that innocent person taken to the ground would be a young adult male whose behavior and/or papers and identification fit a profile and raise red flags … and not an obviously disabled Israeli teenage girl travelling with her Israeli mother.
“I gather that you might think that is an imposition on you.”
No, given a choice between:
a) boarding a plane with passengers who’ve gone through TSA-style screening (with failure rates of up to 95% in finding replica bombs and weapons carried by undercover agents), but which has been shorn of disabled teenage girls …
b) boarding a plane with passengers who’ve gone through competent, serious Israeli-style profiling …
I’ll chose the latter every time, even if it means having to get to the airport earlier and being comparatively more inconvenienced. The peace of mind, especially if I’m travelling with my wife and children, would be well worth it.
Yes, obviously, the volume per capita and as I pointed out we have a Bill of Rights (happy 4th) that has been interpreted as incompatible with profiling. Ever heard of DWB?
I guess you will be signup for TSA Precheck. It wasn’t that big a deal. However, I have not yet tested it out.
FYI, I also signed up for ‘Mobile Passport’. That worked like a charm. I filled out the standard form on my phone. When I got to customs, they had a separate, much shorter line for those with Global Entry or Mobile Passport. They scanned a QR code on my phone and waved me through.
In addition to the travel volume, the Israeli approach takes a lot of intelligence to implement. There isn’t enough brainpower in the whole of T&A to pull that off. Imagine being profiled by Barney Pfife? It would be a worse mess than we have now.
I imagine that the Israeli are allowed to fire their incompetent or excessively rude people and go out of their way not to hire screeners just to fill some diversity goal.
“Their job is to stop or mitigate threats of terrorism — something they’ve not done.” Much as I dislike the TSA, the above quote is simply wrong.
Ooooooo….I love that idea. 🙂
Every test of the TSA results in a very large percentage of illegal contraband passing through their searches. Knives, guns, fake bombs, or whatever, routinely make it through the screening process at a rate that often exceeds 90% in these tests. The reason why we have not suffered another air hijacking is that the terrorists are simply to afraid to go through the screening process and the competence of the TSA is not an issue.
>
Claiming that the TSA is doing a great job because there has been no terrorist airline event in America is akin to living in Nome, Alaska and stating that you have a magic ring that keeps away all elephants. Since you have never seen an elephant in Nome, you deduce the ring obviously is working.
Gee, maybe it is ‘Kabuki Theater’, but the terrorists must have believed it. We don’t live in Nome and there definitely are animals of the species Terrorist Elephantis that would like to blow up or commandeer planes in my neck of the woods. The purpose is to learn. Can the TSA learn. Probably not. Privatize? Maybe. But privatizing is hardly a panacea.
I am no fan of the TSA. I had to fly a couple of days after the headlines shouted about unacceptably long lines. When I got to the airport, I had to wait for a companion delayed in traffic. I was worried we might miss our flight. I went over to the security area to try to estimate the time it would take. I couldn’t and there was no sign. I asked an agent who was just standing around what his estimate was. He rudely replied ‘that it wasn’t his job to tell me that.
Does it suck? Yes. But the take-away, here, is that a disabled white girl had a very bad experience – not exactly ‘man bites dog’ on this site.
Would it be illegal to fill an empty bottle of Bvlgari Shampoo (~$60/6oz) with Nair, allow it to be confiscated by TSA and imagine the result? Or would it merely be hilarious?
This reminds me of these reviews:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Veet-Men-Hair-Removal-Cream/product-reviews/B000KKNQBK
The second is quite entertaining. Warning do not read these while eating or you may choke.
Very powerful advice. Read with caution.
Oh my… that was hilarious. Fortunately, there was nothing in my mouth at the time, or it would have been all over my keyboard and monitor. >_<
I'm saving that link.
All the niceties cited above are good, but someone in this incidence needs an ass whupping.
An ass whupping every day for a month of Sundays.
You’re darn right Old0311. I know good and well I wouldn’t last long and I would be injured and in jail or dead, I would not care. I would not stand for this to happen in front of me.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” -Edmund Burke
What would you do if someone did this to a member of your family in any other context? Why would this context be any different?
Having travelled in and out of the Memphis airport several times I just cannot fathom this story. One time a family with a severely disabled child was accommodated with the utmost compassion. The entire family was cared for and every effort was made to change their flight so they could meet their international flight at Newark Liberty. Everyone at the airport helped to get the luggage on the right flight and the passengers were patient with the ultimate delay in finally getting this family on board
They want to be militaristic? Ok – let them face a firing squad.
The crying boehners will be on this the first of…never.
We will never fly again but I can see the day when these illiterate thugs will be allowed to check passengers at bus stations, train stations and then vehicles at rest areas on the highways. All in the interest of keeping the public safe of course.
Yes. Yes. Let’s all comment on a one sided story that has nothing other than a story provided by the plaintiff in a lawsuit. Those are always factual and in no way inaccurate.
Give someone a badge and exemption from personal responsibility and the outcome is not pretty.
They are not demanding enough in this case, even if the actual thugs responsible are not even disciplined or forced to cover for the public costs.