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.
Stop and think for a moment.
#1, Every “regular” American accepts reasonable restrictions in our daily life. My car can go about 140 MPH, but I hold it to the speed limit. I don’t urinate on the sidewalk, although I am guaranteed the right to use that sidewalk, I know not to pizz on it. You don’t want the TSA check? Walk, drive, hitchhike, rent your own plane, etc, but don’t fly.
Regardless of the problems, TSA has prevented or deterred hijackings. When I was younger, idiots were taking planes to Havana every week. Now, not so. Is TSA perfect? Far from it, but given the choice of “enduring” TSA or telling terrorists we will not check people boarding planes, I’ll take TSA every time.
Could it be improved? Certainly. Would I get on a plane where I knew that others were told in advance there would be no screening? No.
#2, This woman was totally out of control. She was not “raped” by an x-ray. She was not “sexually assaulted” when an other woman ran the back of her hands over the alerted areas. She actually admits she was enraged and out of any logical thinking, not when she was patted down, and not that “someone had purposely make the machine alert” on her, but this is a woman who was out of control because she had to stand still for 3 seconds with her hands up while the machine checked her!
How does she put her deodorant on in the morning? A “hands-down” IV?
What is a dental x-ray to check for cavities? Forced oral sodomy?
That is not rational. Frankly, that is not a person I want to share space with when she is armed and making life of death Shoot-Don’t Shoot decisions with the same irrationality that does not know the difference between rape and a few electrons.
You do have a point. That would be the bridge too far. A plane ride, however, is still mostly optional.
re: My Johnson? Of course there was a quick pat there. If it was the policy to not do so, the terrs would know exactly where to hide a weapon.
I just didn’t go ape shoot over it.
Other nations? Getting out of Tel Aviv last May was 5 minutes. The time before, 45. I was just “my turn” the time before.
You do have a point. That would be the bridge too far. A plane ride, however, is still mostly optional and what comes with your ticket is a known abuse you accept, or not.
I appreciate your reasonable sounding feedback.
You do realize no one went “down her pants”,right? TSA makes you show your waist band in an enhanced search. They frisk around the interior of the waist band, but surely you know that.
I am not that convinced that TSA agents, in general, enjoy drawing an enhanced search any more than passengers.
They are not afraid to profile. Most of that is done before a passenger steps foot in an airport. They have trained undercover security looking for suspicious people as well as armed security inside the terminal. They send baggage through pressure chambers to detonate any explosives. They screen the cars coming in to detect anything out of the ordinary. They try to use common sense instead of being p.c.
“She was in an Italian restaurant once when the the pie maker was tossing a pizza around in the air and a piece of pepperoni flew off and hit her in the bare arm.
She cut off his head with the pizza slicer.”
How can you even say something this stupid?
This woman was mistreated by TSA. She deserves sympathy not a stupid statement like that.
You sound like a sick perv who gets off on this stuff.
Or maybe a TSA employee.
You need to learn some common courtesy and some manners.
Good on you, kiddo. You imagine you know something. I would tell you you're dead wrong, but you wouldn't believe me. That's okay, though. My report has gone out far and wide, and your misconceptions and false accusations against me will go nowhere.
Indecent aggression against our cultured society has come incrementally through the decades. It IS assault, and no one should have to endure this. I am amazed that masses of people allow it.
Personally, I stopped flying rather than submit to their outrageous tyranny. However, no citizen should have to forfeit his right to travel freely via flying, unless they submit to being physically touched by strangers dressed in costumes (uniforms) complete with “badges” which are supposed to somehow make touching you legitimate.
Just the fact that Israel doesn’t implement a similar system, and has success, should clearly demonstrate that safety is NOT the gov’t’s intention. Rather, it is to force a compliant, submissive citizenry who checks their “attitude” and licks the jackboots.
We live in tyranny, freely and grudgingly accepted by those rationalizing the sacrificing of their liberties for safety. They deserve our pity and derision. I wouldn’t want to be in a foxhole with them. Ben Franklin and our FF would agree.
My point exactly.
I have titanium screws in my ankles and lower leg from a badly broken ankle.
I can set off all sorts of alarms. When I fly i go in shorts and sandals so they can see my legs
thanks but I do not hold myself as a victim. TSA does piss me off but that is an isolated thing.
The VA takes great care of me and I raised my hand and stepped forward, no one took advantage of me.
I can walk normally and do anything except get down on my knees so I think of myself as one of the lucky ones.
What I wish is that there was a way to preregister and submit the doctors paperwork so I do not have to get groped every time I want to fly.
Thanks for the encouragement.
How was she mistreated?
What should TSA have done differently.
They (HER words) “RAPE scanner” her (the micro dose x-ray).
They made her stand like a criminal for three seconds with her hands up at shoulder height? (if that’s a problem, how did she ever get a bag into the overhead bin on any plane)
Then someone purposely made the machine alarm on her, do I dare say the word... her, you know... her... thing! (of course they did, it was the little man behind the green curtain.)
Oh my God, they used fresh gloves, then with the outside / backs of their hands, they touched the parts of er body where the scanner said their might be metal. Oh the indignity of it!
And of course, if you read between the lines, it’s also obvious she felt extra violated because the person who did the patdown was.... well... you know... not one of “our people”... she was...black!
Should the TSA have not patted here there so terrorists know exactly where to hide weapons or bottles of poisonous chemicals?
The bottom line is she wanted 9 paragraphs of pity and irrational over-exaggeration to cry about what millions of Americans go through every day. They may not lie it, but realize it necessary for safe skies.
I have a pacemaker and get hand checked every time. No big deal. Ever play grab ass in a locker room after gym, no big deal. Ever get fraternity paddled? Ever get Blood Wings?
Ever get a yearly digital test for prostate cancer? Ever hand a “sample” to the female OBGYN nurse so artificial insemination can help your brother and his wife get pregnant?
No BFD
Any woman who gets this freaked out because her pee pee got touched is not rational..... and may have a few unresolved questions or fears about her own sexuality?
If she doesn’t like to fly and the activities used to keep flying a litle safer, then let her walk
Bottom line is, A few electrons are NOT rape. Grow up lady
I salute you, Old Sarge! What a great read. But why are you flying a Russia flag on your profile (which also made for fun reading)?
Anyways, we're discussing the Bill of Rights on this thread using this event to showcase how numb and ready for dictatorship our formerly individualistic culture had become.
Good luck to you and hope you recover.
Because of the shooting event, could the scanner have picked up gun residue on your clothes?
I don’t mean to be flippant about your experience, but I would never have tolerated that procedure.
Was the trip that important?
Understand that I agree and that TSA must go, but it will never happen while we are collectively subservient and continue to buy airline tickets...
I was truly hoping your story was one of protest as I read about what is now all-too-common.
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