90% of the TSA Ex-Spurts miss the obvious....
Posted on 04/02/2006 1:45:23 PM PDT by SLB
An infuriated Denver woman has filed a complaint with the Transportation Security Administration after a security screener forced her 83-year-old mother to get out of her wheelchair and walk to a pre-flight screening area, despite doctor's orders not to stand and an orthopedic card saying she had a metal plate in her hip.
The incident at Denver International Airport occurred eight days ago when Sally Moon, her sister and a Frontier Airlines employee were transporting Bernice "Bea" Bogart to a special security screening area. Moon's sister, who did not have concourse clearance and the Frontier employee were left behind as Moon pushed her mother to the screening site.
Bogart, wheelchair bound since a 1999 fall that broke her hip and further disabled by breast cancer surgery in 1997 and a major stroke in 2004 that caused dementia, was under strict doctor's orders not to stand without assistance or her walker. She carried a special orthopedic card to alert airport security she had a metal plate in her hip.
Moon had been told by Frontier and TSA staff that screeners would not require Bogart to leave her chair for the security check, so she turned to put her mother's carry-on luggage through the x-ray device. When she turned back, she discovered her mother had been picked out for further screening and was out of her chair, "hobbling" through a glass-walled corridor.
"There were no grab bars," Moon told the Rocky Mountain News. "What I could see really was her fingers trying to hang onto a little ledge."
Moon says she instinctively reached out to assist her mother, fearing another fall and another broken hip.
"Don't touch her!" Moon says the screener warned.
Moon attempted to tell the young screener, a woman in her mid-to-late 20s, that her mother was under doctor's orders not to stand without her four-wheeled walker, but the screener shot back, "You'd better change your attitude. Or do you want me to make it so you don't fly today?"
Bogart, who is also hard of hearing, was allowed to sit briefly, but the screener soon instructed her to stand again and lift her arms, according to Moon. She then reportedly lifted Bogart's arms because the elderly woman couldn't, due to her earlier breast cancer surgery.
Moon says she was told to sit across the room "or else" when she continued to protest.
After the "prolonged search," the pair was cleared to continue to their gate and Moon put her "shocked" mother on the flight to Tennessee for a month's visit with Bogart's youngest daughter.
An angry Moon attempted to complain to Denver's TSA management, but was told to make her complaint to the national office. Supervisors would not tell her the name of the screener who had made boarding her mother so difficult.
"I don't know if she thought my mom had a bomb in her Depends or what," Moon said.
Hey, if you want to professionalize, you need to federalize.
Just one more reason why I no longer fly unless I am dragged to the plane kicking and screeming.
""I don't know if she thought my mom had a bomb in her Depends or what," Moon said."
If not a bomb they could have been loaded.
Those are the target of choice for easy searches by the TSA boneheads.
If you were there and witnessed this happening, would you have been brave enough to stand up and say NO!
Since you are not willing to defend what you know is right, people like this 83 year old woman was harassed by our government.
Each and every one of you should be ashamed, if you failed to stand up and say NO!
Flying is no longer Plan A for my business trips. I only consider flying is I absolutely cannot make a road trip work out for the individual circumstances.
I'm so grateful to Norm Mineta and TSA for keeping us safe from this potential terrorist.
Typical power-crazed bonehead in a job of authority. This is the reason I choose to not fly any more.
TSB the best and brightest--NOT. The nimrods they hire are just plain scarey. People who have never had (and should never have) a lick of authority in their life, and now can't wait to use it. I fly all the time in my job and when one of them strikes me as professional I note it--shows how little it happens--its noteable.
I no longer fly, and this is why.
Ah, the professionalism of federal employees.
There is a word for that: COWARD!
No wonder it costs so much money for security, and then it doesn't make us any more safe.
Are you calling me a coward?
Keep your powder dry- These TSA A*&holes should all be fired and replaced with our "guest workers". Wait a minute- I think they already were.
JBT?
90% of the TSA Ex-Spurts miss the obvious....
I am not a coward!
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