Posted on 02/20/2017 3:05:56 PM PST by WXRGina
It was an excellent week-long trip my husband Keith and I took to Arizona to take the 250 Pistol Class from Gunsite Academy. The week ended, and it was time for us to fly back home this past Saturday, February 18th. While I have gone through Transportation Security Administration (TSA) regional airport checkpoints since its spawning after 9-11, I had not yet gone through a TSA checkpoint at a major airport. Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport is a major airport, and on Saturday, I was immersed there in one of those TSA "horror stories" about which I had previously only read.
My very dim view of the TSA has been shaped by all the reports of corruption, misconduct, molestation and sexual assault, theft, abuse of power and ineptitude by the TSA. To find these stories, you need only do an Internet search with any of those terms along with "TSA." In addition to all that, air travelers in the United States are now stupidly forced to remove their shoes because of one Muslim maniac.
Needless to say, as we stood in the moderately long line of the Sky Harbor TSA security checkpoint, I was not happy and only wanted it to be over. We finally arrived at the x-ray conveyor belt with all the gray plastic bins into which we had to put our shoes, belts, purses, bags, watches, cell phones, laptops and anything in our pockets. When flying, I always try to wear nothing that would cause the x-ray imaging machines to raise an alert. So, I wore no belt or any jewelry. I had nothing in my pockets. I only carried my small purse, and I wore blue jeans, a long-sleeved cotton t-shirt and simple leather boots. I removed my boots and placed them and my purse into two of the bins and pushed them on toward the x-ray screener.
I was directed into the – what I call a "rape scan" – body imaging machine. As you may know, we are forced to stand inside it for several seconds with our arms held up as if we're common criminals, and the machine does a circular spin around our bodies. When the scan was done, a black woman told me to step out of the machine. I'm guessing this woman was probably in her early thirties. She directed my attention to the human body outline image on a screen outside the machine, which displayed the supposed results of my scan. There were "warning" boxes superimposed directly on the crotch, one knee and one ankle area, which I instantly knew were bogus.
Because of those flags, she informed me I would be subjected to an enhanced pat-down. I numbly looked at the entirely phony warning box images on the screen, knowing that with the advanced imaging capabilities of that machine, it would not possibly have "seen" any kind of threat anywhere on my body, much less between my legs. Nevertheless, I stood there silently with a smoldering outrage welling inside me as this girl described the sexual assault she was about to undertake on my body.
I hardly heard what she was saying she was about to do, because I was so angry knowing that this was a fake result, either from the machine or from someone's arbitrary decision to subject me to this despicable, Fourth Amendment-crushing, far-beyond-unreasonable search. She finished her little speech by asking me if I preferred [my sexual assault] to be done in a "private room" or right where we stood in front of hundreds of onlookers. I was barely able to mumble a "here" with an indication of my hand gesturing down to the yellow footprint stickers on the floor where I was to place my feet.
She required me to assist her in my sexual assault. I had to lift my shirt to give her clear access to my waistband, into which she thrust her blue-latex-gloved fingers and ran them all around the front and back of it. She made me hold my pants in place from the top as she crouched down and firmly ran her hands from the top of my legs to the bottom, both front, back and sides. She firmly pushed and rubbed her hands between my legs, the entire area – THE ENTIRE AREA – from the front and back.
She finally directed me to hold out my hands, palms up, as she swabbed them with damp squares of white tissue, which she inserted into a machine that I assume "sniffed" for explosive residue. When it gave my hands the all-clear, she indicated that I was free to go.
At that point, I was fairly blind with rage. Shakily, gritting my teeth hard enough to beat the band, I went and retrieved my boots and purse from the end of the screener belt several yards away, where they had remained while I got the enhanced grope-down. I was glad no one had taken my purse. Keith had been moved along after going through security, and from his viewpoint was unable to see my belongings or what was happening to me.
Still seeing red, I slowly walked to a chair near the TSA checkpoint to put on my boots. I was shaking with rage, and my husband had to quickly talk me down from reacting to the powerful anger that was exploding in my mind. The sickening feelings of rage, helplessness and violation continued to roil in me for the rest of the day.
What can I do? File a complaint with the TSA? Yeah, right. Call my congressman? And get a nice form letter reply in the mail in a month or so? Yeah, no. I'm powerless here, as are the many other people who have been sexually assaulted by the TSA. Maybe you'd like me to tone it down a notch and call it "molestation" or merely "groping," but I know what happened to me, and in any other situation, it would be legally regarded as sexual assault. If an ordinary person did to me what that woman – by authority of bad law – did to me, he would go to jail.
The TSA should be dismantled. Airport security needs to be returned to the airlines and local airports. The federal government's takeover of airport security screening after 9-11 has only created yet another unaccountable, monstrous bureaucracy that continues to grow in corruption, especially under Obama's recent lawless reign. Free-born American citizens should not have to abide such degenerate despotism in the name of "security." The TSA has seized illegitimate power in its random imposition of unreasonable searches on innocent airline passengers. If the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution means anything, then the TSA must go.
I had the exact same thing happen to me, it is calculated, to give the appearance that they are not profiling people of color. I was just thankful it happened to me and not my 21 year old daughter.
I fly about 150 times a year, mostly out of the same airports, been doing that for the last 10 years or so.
I have seen it all, the TSA is mostly a jobs program for low IQ minorities and white trash, the supervisors all think they are Jeh Johnson Jr, scowling at everyone as if they are accomplishing something.
Lately have been seeing more vets though, and the election of Trump has definitely changed the dynamic, pushing Whitney around just for kicks is on hold until they see if they can still get away with it.
Whitey
Is this your story ???
Are you “Gina Miller” ???
well then welcome ...
I used to get wanded about 1/2 the time ,...no alerts...
I got TSA precheck, which allows you to avoid the "rape machine."
It is precisely for reasons such as this that I have not flown since 1996. And have no plans to in the future. I’d rather drive. Yes, it takes longer and is possibly more expensive but we live in such a beautiful country with nice, friendly people.
FYI about 1/2 of the TSA employees are ex-military, retired police and fire dept, and corrections.
You go girl! I'm with you all the way!! The Clintons and Gore were itching to create airport screening, but we the people of the 90’s still retained the idea of Right to Privacy.
Anyone who believes you should submit to this unreasonable search of your vagina and rectum has become a sheep.
I would gladly go through the screening process of El Al which uses profiling and psychological questions vs. submit to this mindless, braindead, politically correct system! All of it, including hiring alien Muslims to work at airports, is designed to break us of our American outrage at all forms of tyranny,
Thank you for expressing the kind of astonishment and anger at injustice that the best of us still feel!
The Westerner
No it does not.
Gina, I am sorry to hear about this incident.
You wrote an article about what a fun week you had in pistol shooting and training in AZ.
I stopped flying in Sept. 2002 for this very reason.
I’m a guy, a little overweight. When the TSA guy poked my belly to make sure it was real that was the last straw.
I had flown for 24 years all over the country on business.
But when that incident happened I was filled with rage and had to restrain myself.
I wanted to haul off at the guy, and I’m usually pretty easygoing.
I told my wife—no more flying, because the next time this happens, I will probably cause an incident.
Luckily, I did not have to fly for my new job from then on.
But since then, we drive. I take as much as I want, stop when I want, we have fun along the way.
No waiting in lines, no running for flights about to depart, no airport traffic, no being squished into a flying bus.
I would encourage you to write to your Congresscritter and to the White House.
We all think one voice is meaningless, but one voice among many adds up and change can happen.
The TSA banks on you not making a scene and meekly complying, otherwise you will miss your flight.
They are petty tyrants, and yes, there are perverts among them.
It was a crappy ending to a good trip for you, and for that, you have my sympathy.
What I am amazed at is the lack of uniformity in searches and investigations by TSA crews. I recently flew, and will explain the treatment i received at two different airports.
I have MS. I use a wheelchair in an airport. I also have an implanted Baclofen pump, which is a hockey puck sized device implanted in my abdomen. A plain x-ray will show the device, quite prominently, and also show the catheter that carries the med from the pump to my spine. I also carry a card which I hand to the TSA agent at the very start, and it verifies the pump and my identity as a recipient of the device.
Leaving my home airport, they were concerned about the pump, even though I had given them the card. I was due for a pat down if I didn’t do the full scanner... I can stand and walk short distances so I chose the scanner. I got into the machine and then was asked to raise my arms over my head. I told them that wasn’t going to happen because they don’t raise any higher than my ears. At any rate they were okay with that, and they met me with my wheelchair on the other side...and I was on my way.
Return flight. This TSA crew were obsessed with the wheelchair. The first TSA group had barely even looked at it, I seemed to be the threat. This time my wheelchair seemed to be the threat. I never went through any scan, no pat down, only had my hands swabbed...I don’t even remember them using a hand scanner. But the wheelchair, it endured the “assault.” They swabbed the entire chair, took it apart (I had been asked to sit in a chair they provided) and then put it back together. Once they were convinced my
little travel wheelchair was not the threat, I was on my way.
I’d like to know who decides what is and isn’t a priority in a search, and why one group would target me, and the other crew targeted my wheelchair. Very strange, and absolutely no uniformity....it all seems so subjective and directed by the “whim” of the TSA crew as to if you do or don’t “pass muster.”
Hell yeah!
Kill the TSA now, airports can do their own security. No moslems allowed to fly, to enter the airport, and certainly no muzz-holes allowed as employees.
The first screening test is the American-accent test, it would be compared to your ID. Normal looking and sounding Americans are breezed right through.
Non citizens, foreign accents and suspicious looking/acting passengers get the third degree. Followed by a pass through the "mohammed joke and cartoon room".
Any problems from the above....arrest, detention and further investigation. Two armed Sky Marshalls on each flight, and the pilots are armed as well. Hidden cameras in the passenger sections with video monitors in the cockpit.
It is not illegal because you are volunteering to the screening when you enter the TSA area. Their rebuttal, ‘don’t fly’.
Buttons, I was in Phoenix and had already paid for a plane ticket home to the MS Gulf Coast, almost 1600 miles away. It was neither practical nor timely do that--for most anyone--as you should know.
Maybe you have the same problem I do. It is a curse to be so attractive.
Yes, as a quick check of my FReeper page would show you.
Have you ever been able to sense an attitude about a person even when they don’t say anything. Body language and facial expressions say a lot. Not saying this is what happened, but I’m sure they have seen quite a bit of it. Just keep in mind, they are doing their job. If there is an issue with the person that is one thing. But, if you don’t like how they do things - then that is a complaint for the higher ups, not the grunts.
Getting knee replacement this month. It does not sound as if the airport security will be a pleasant experience.
Irish
The author is the poster.
I didn't "complain" to anyone, much less the "grunt" who groped me. I wrote a column about it. Further, there is NO ONE who is happy about going through a TSA checkpoint. Not smiling or being happy about it doesn't equate to "terrorist threat." If that's "their job," then they're crummy at it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.