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.
Thank Islam for this.
That and feckless government.
YEP. >:-(
Its why i havent flown for 16+ years. TSA is glorified baggage handlers given a sewn on badge. The ones you would,deal with, are almost all on the lower half of the bell curve and need both hands nd no talking, to find their own a$$holes.
The author seems well forewarned of this type of search. Maybe she didn’t think it would ever happen to her.
A news item from 2 days ago was that TSA people handled the importation of 20 TONS of Cocaine into the USA.
I remember that it was not Miami, as some might expect.
Always report any non-appropriate behavior during a TSA search to the Shift Supervisor.
I’ve done it three times.
Be professional, detailed and not angry.
One crazy probably got fired.
The other got a talking to.
Remember, many of these people couldn’t find a job anywhere else and have probably been fired once before.
It is a wonder that some passenger of the millions that have had this happen to them hasn’t completely flipped out and tried to kill the Agent doing this.
I hate the TSA.
They are effin frauds possessing the bare intellectual capacity of 3rd graders.
I have been searched and had a faggot put his hands down my sweat pants about two months after 911.
I was pretty pisses and called out to the police, who came over.
I explained this midget clown kept wanting to feel me up.
They said they had seen what the guy was doing and urged him to continue his job without any further attempts of what they described as possible sexual assault or they would arrest him.
One LEO slapped me on the shoulder and bid me a good trip.
The faggot waved me off and I never saw him again.
I offer to pay them to do that to me each time I go through security......
Sometimes I fly just to get groped....
What bothers me the most is they use the same gloves, possibly spreading disease.
My fury at the results of your story was quite interesting. I have had the same problem. In my case due to a double mastectomy, special interest has always been on my flat chest which they must run their hands over numerous times in order to “Know it is flat” and not a big elastic bandaid 9or so one told me!).
My solution? As soon as I am in line I unbutton my shirt completely and open it up. I take off my shoes and as I approach the little group I start to take off my jeans or skirt. I keep my face totally flat. I say nothing. I just disrobe.
You would be surprised how quickly my “inspection” is finished. I anyone were to treat me again as you have been treated I truly think I will scream “rape, rape, rape—get her off of me!” I don’t care if I go to jail. I will not allow it to go “unseen” again.
I have two total knee replacements. Even though I have TSA precheck I have to go thru the big scanner and always a full body pat down. It seems to me they could just scan my knees with a hand wand......
My husband was randomly selected for a search several years ago. After being felt up and down at the screening point, they also called him when he got to the gate and he had to take off his shoes and searched again. Mind you, he had over 2 million miles on American Airlines alone and over a decade of traveling frequently!!! Happily, he doesn’t travel much more than once a year now. With the spread of Islam, even as airport employees, traveling isn’t really fun any longer as you pay to be herded from one place to another.
I am really sorry to read about your experience.
I stopped flying with my daughters when they started using the “nudie” microwave scanners in the airports. I did file complaints...with the TSA and with the airlines. I would encourage you to do the same. Otherwise, they assume that we are compliant sheep, bleating in line, but accepting of their assaults and delays.
I did start flying again when they replaced the scanners with the “gumby” versions. It’s not really better, but at least the pervs aren’t getting a free look.
I would make a complaint with your local rep in Congress, too. It’s INSANE that they get paid to do what would land folks in JAIL if done at other locations and without the crappy blue shirt.
Again, sorry you had to go through that.
Geez after that TSA at least owed her dinner and drinks
Maybe flowers
I have never heard Trump say he would disband the TSA. That would have been my question at any campaign town hall. “Mr. Trump, will you disband the TSA and allow airports to use their own security that does not involve checking the diapers of babies diapers and the wheelchairs of paraplegic octogenarians. What will you do about the near strip searching and sexual assaults being conducted by the current TSA?”
There's no doubt this has hurt the airline industry and caused more highway deaths, due to people choosing to drive instead of fly.
My wife I had a similar experience with the Orlando TSA. We were two older white people standing in a very long very “multicultural” line. There were many younger people who would cause most others to cross to the other side of the street if they were walking toward you after dark.
Yet the ones they pulled from line and had strip down to our underwear were my wife and I. We were both clean and neatly dressed and do not look threatening in any way. My assumption is that we looked like we would put up the least amount of resistance of all the people in line.
I can share that I have been present during lots of pat downs while working with the police. I have never seen pat downs with the police that were as intrusive as what my wife and I experienced. It was disturbing.
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