Posted on 06/26/2011 3:39:10 AM PDT by LibWhacker
A woman has filed a complaint with federal authorities over how her elderly mother was treated at Northwest Florida Regional Airport last weekend.
Jean Weber of Destin filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security after her 95-year-old mother was detained and extensively searched last Saturday while trying to board a plane to fly to Michigan to be with family members during the final stages of her battle with leukemia.
Her mother, who was in a wheelchair, was asked to remove an adult diaper in order to complete a pat-down search.
“It’s something I couldn’t imagine happening on American soil,” Weber said Friday. “Here is my mother, 95 years old, 105 pounds, barely able to stand, and then this.”
Sari Koshetz, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration in Miami, said she could not comment on specific cases to protect the privacy of those involved.
“The TSA works with passengers to resolve any security alarms in a respectful and sensitive manner,” she said.
Weber’s mother entered the airport’s security checkpoint in a wheelchair because she was not stable enough to walk through, Weber said.
Wheelchairs trigger certain protocols, including pat-downs and possible swabbing for explosives, Koshetz said.
“During any part of the process, if there is an alarm, then we have to resolve that alarm,” she said.
Weber said she did not know whether her mother had triggered an alarm during the 45 minutes they were detained.
She said her mother was first pulled aside into a glass-partitioned area and patted down. Then she was taken to another room to protect her privacy during a more extensive search, Weber said.
Weber said she sat outside the room during the search.
She said security personnel then came out and told her they would need for her mother to remove her Depends diaper because it was soiled and was impeding their search.
Weber wheeled her mother into a bathroom, removed her diaper and returned. Her mother did not have another clean diaper with her, Weber said.
Weber said she wished there were less invasive search methods for an elderly person who is unable to walk through security gates.
“I don’t understand why they have to put them through that kind of procedure,” she said.
Koshetz said the procedures are the same for everyone to ensure national security.
“TSA cannot exempt any group from screening because we know from intelligence that there are terrorists out there that would then exploit that vulnerability,” she said.
Weber filed a complaint through Northwest Florida Regional’s website. She said she received a response from a Homeland Security representative at the airport on Tuesday and spoke to that person on the phone Wednesday.
The representative told her that personnel had followed procedures during the search, Weber said.
“Then I thought, if you’re just following rules and regulations, then the rules and regulations need to be changed,” she said.
Weber said she plans to file additional complaints next week.
“I’m not one to make waves, but dadgummit, this is wrong. People need to know. Next time it could be you.”
Could you give us the background of this photo? WWII Germans with prisoners?
Does Napolitano ever give a press conference? Some press person should ask her what she thinks she is doing, forcing this elderly woman to remove her Depends, in order to be forcibly searched (yes, it’s forcible — can the woman refuse?) in order to take a plane?
What was the probable cause for the search? Would law enforcement be allowed to do this without a warrant? What law did this poor elderly woman break?
I want Texas so much to implement that anti-TSA legislation so that we can confront this BS once and for all. Then our doofus Hawaiian ruler, his disingenuous wife, and his lesbian Interior Minister will have to explain cases like this and the infants being patted down in front of a public court.
I think the most appropriate place for the soiled Depends
would have been on/around some TSA supervisor’s head.
Sigh.
Ain’t our Republic’s slide into hell smellin’ great?
/sarc
Things like this, is why I will NEVER fly again. I would end up being arrested at the TSA checkpoint, either for the treatment to myself, or to a total stranger being violated.
Tell me where a granny has carried a bomb onto a domestic flight in the U.S.?
Or a small child? ANY CHILD? Anyone other than a MUSLIM MALE?
While the airlines and cruise lines won’t miss me, I’ve voted with my feet and wallet.
bump
Think about it...95yr old woman, wheel chair, diaper, she absolutely fits the PROFILE of a TEA Party Terrorist. Very dangerous.
“BECAUSE THEY CAN!”
no....
BECAUSE WE LET THEM.
I've noticed more and more people are not flying, unless necessary. The cruise industry is even selling out the ships that leave from NY and NJ. Disney cruises will also be going out of NJ.
I read that trans-Atlantic cruises are making a come-back. You have to have the time to do that, but people are fed up with the airlines.
I'm also fed up with the airlines.
I have a feeling that if/when civilization falls apart, TSA agents will be among the first to be lined up and shot.
Just sayin’, y’know?
This person needs to be held accountable....actions mean things...words mean things.
One by one...accountability to the public.
She will begin encountering the ordinary problems of living in society and she won't like it at all. Most of us could write her first letter of complaint.
Just thinking about it makes me want to laugh ~ but I'm not going to laugh.
Ultimately she will find the illegal aliens roaming through her New Mexico neighborhood ~ and no one will come to help her.
The problem was that the diaper was soiled, and they can't see through human feces to spot a bomb?
Or they didn't feel like continuing the search without pushing their weight around, and getting their hands dirty?
False positives will kill TSA by overwhelming the system, much as fake voter IDs hurt the election process.
they were looking for a “BOMB”...???
Maybe they found one.. or two...
I will say it.
This is insane.
Well, this whole thing is not about HS. It is yet another way for the Lefty FEDS to strip Americans of that “arrogant minset”.
If people are forced to accept personal indignancies it is not far behind that they will consider radical moves by Big Brother a welcome relief. Why do you think the Nazi’s forced the Concentration Camp victims to walk to the Gas chambers nude. Force them to think about the indignity rather than the fate they were to face. They were relieved to go into those rooms. THAT is the EVIL that these very same minds are capable of, count on it.
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