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John Pistole’s victims are legion – and all are “one-offs” Posted: 17 Sep 2012 01:00 AM PDT
Pistole said that negative incidents involving TSA, like an 8-month-old baby being patted down, were “one-offs.” “When you have 1.8 million people . . . (who go through airport security) every day, we do have these, call them one-off situations,” he said. “The vast majority of people go through effectively and efficiently. The goal is to reduce those one-offs so we can provide security in the most effective way.” I want to turn this over now, again, to the voices of the many letter writers who shared their anguish and grief over being abused by the TSA. Every one of these people is just another one-off to John Pistole. He doesn’t care how badly he hurts people as long as most of them don’t complain. It’s shocking that Pistole sleeps soundly at night, carelessly dismissing the humiliation and in many cases physical pain he has intentionally inflicted on all of these travelers. After all, the vast majority of people did not write one of these heart-wrenching letters: “His touch was firm enough that he felt the shape of my legs. This includes feeling around my crotch enough that he could clearly feel my testicles through my jeans. I couldn’t believe it. But the worst was yet to come. He then walked behind me, pulled my shirt tail out of my pants and then stuck his hands down my pants. He walked all the way around my body with his hands in my underwear. I’ve never been so humiliated in my whole life.” “… he was so rough he injured my testicles and I was nauseated for hours. Please instruct your employees to be gentle with this old vet.” “The security agent aggressively ran the side of his hand upward into my testicles 4 times during the patdown. This action caused me physical pain each time. This was the first time I had been assaulted in this manner. The result of this action also caused mental anguish. When I complained to the policeman at the screening facility I was briskly informed that this was a federal government matter and that I ‘have no rights here.’” “I am required to turn down the waistband so the agent can pat my penis. Pretty degrading, you might agree, but nothing compared to my wife’s experience.” “She felt all the way up and down inside my legs through an ankle-length dress. I felt violated and moved away, to which she responded, ‘I’m not done yet!’ This so shook me, an 82-year-old woman, that I sat in the area ½ hour to calm down. ” “We were made to stand spread-eagled … and the officers did not slide their hands. Rather they squeezed in a way that felt assaultive and demeaning.” “She used the word ‘brutal’ to describe her patdown.” “Rather than perform a traditional patdown, my breasts, buttocks, and genitals were stroked and the agent placed her hands inside my pants and stroked my stomach and torso. I felt that this was sexually violating.” “During a new patdown I received I had to ask the screener to remove his finger from my anus. I am humiliated for the fact that I had to make this request of the screener and for the fact that this happened in public.” “I can honestly say that day was one of the worst days of my life. I was chosen for the new patdown procedure, which is now referred to in my house as ‘assault and battery’.” “This is a protest against the trauma I suffered from a sexually perverted woman employed by our federal government in the Spokane, Washington airport.” “During the patdown the TSA employee gave such a severe chop to my groin that it not only hurt, but knocked me off balance.” “He poked my penis and my testicles very hard, I was very much in pain from this type of inspection which has never been performed on me at any airport that I have ever been to. After he poked my private parts very hard, he proceeded to use the metal detector wand on my buttocks, he poked and stuck his wand into my rectum very hard and again I was very much in pain. I worked in a federal prison for 20 years and not even inmates were treated like I was treated by this security officer at the Phoenix, Arizona airport.“ “To say the least, the experience was both intimidating and humiliating. The TSA agent only said – you are not going to avoid the body scan or a patdown. I began to freak out and started to cry. Immediately I was surrounded by three TSA agents, all who began yelling at me. They continued to harass me and say, ‘you are going through the scanner.’ Suddenly another TSA agent was on her knees giving me a full patdown (including legs, private areas, etc.) That should have been the end, however, I was pushed into the scanner.” “The experience is beyond demeaning. Picture the nastiest, surliest, grossest, most belligerent DMV employee you’ve ever encountered and now picture that this person has the right to put their nasty, vile, gross hands all over you. And be verbally abusive as well. The thug who groped me whispered something in her compatriot’s ear and they both apparently had a good laugh at my distress.” “I said that I had a torn right shoulder rotator cuff. He then asked me to hold my arms up. I said I couldn’t. He said that I had to anyway. The patdown took 3 to 5 minutes and I finally lowered my shoulder as the perspiration rolled off my forehead from the pain. Now I am overweight, say 250 pounds. I had no belt on and the officer after first doing my front, sides top and back, went back to the front of my waist and grabbed my fat. He said, ‘what do you have in here?’ I said, it’s me, it’s my skin. Then the three of them chuckled, laughed, and let me go to my gate. I am still shaking when I think about how I was treated! I am barely sleeping . . . every time I fall asleep I wake up sweating and shaking. I don’t know if I will ever fly again.” “I then had a patdown so abusively rough that it left bruising on my left arm. This treatment had nothing to do with safety – it had to do with power and unquestionable authority of these TSA individuals.“ “Is a TSA agent allowed to spread my labia in her inspection? Why is a TSA agent allowed to put so much pressure on my breasts that she leaves bruises? Is this standard procedure? When I ask the TSA agent to touch her own body where she intends to touch mine, so I can get a true and honest understanding of her techniques – why is she allowed to refuse providing such explicit information?” “The way I was treated made me never want to fly again. In the future I will just make the 8 hours to Denver by car. It will certainly be easier and less demeaning. I was treated like a criminal, separated from my 13yo son, taken to a separate room so that I could have the demeaning patdown that for some reason takes three men to perform. I don’t care all that much about a patdown for me, because I’m used to taking abuse from uneducated people in my line of work. I will say, however, that if they tried to treat my son that way I would have punched the guy. “It was one of the worst experiences of my life. I never want to be subjected to this kind of physical, mental, and emotional abuse again, especially anywhere in the United States of America.” (Photo: Flickr Creative Commons/Gulin Kopec) |
Has the TSA become its own worst enemy? Posted: 16 Sep 2012 06:00 AM PDT
Just pay attention to the news. Last week’s numerous TSA meltdowns underscored the findings of the Subcommittee on Transportation Security, which recommended a dramatic restructuring of the beleaguered agency that includes privatization, streamlining its lumbering bureaucracy, and giving it the resources to adapting more quickly to new security threats. It’s almost as if someone planned it that way. Let’s start on Monday, a day before the release of the congressional report and a day on which the TSA should have been on high alert. But not at Port Columbus International Airport, where a cat stowed away in a passenger’s luggage was allowed to pass through the TSA’s vaunted 20 layers of security. Bob-Bob, the feline in question, is owned by Ethel Maze of Circleville, Ohio, who was flying to Orlando for a Disney vacation that day. Somehow, Bob-Bob slipped into Maze’s luggage and remained there, undetected, until she opened her bag in Florida. The TSA has no idea how it missed a cat in the bag. “Our machines are very sensitive to picking up explosives and other threats to aviation,” Sari Koshetz, a TSA spokeswoman, told the Orlando Sentinel. That’s just fine. But what if Bob-Bob had been a Bomb-Bomb? Fortunately, America’s finest were willing to protect us from the Passenger With a Bad Attitude who posted a video of her confrontation online for the world to see (see clip, above). As that story broke, observers noted, it was the first time an agent admitted on camera that extra screenings are retaliatory in nature. Indeed, the passenger — whose name remains a mystery — claims she missed her flight. Note to the TSA brass in Washington: How hard can it be to get your employees to follow the script? After all, they were smart enough to answer your ad on a pizza box. How difficult can it be to memorize a few lines? At least TSA’s PR department repeated its pre-approved response when asked to explain itself. “In our initial review,” it claimed, “we concluded that this individual was screened in accordance with standard procedures.” Right. On Wednesday, we heard the remarkable story of the liquor theft ring at JFK Airport. Authorities in New York made a series of arrests after an informant bought 55,000 stolen mini-bottles of booze from the alleged thieves, according to prosecutors. Among the group of suspects were airline employees and private security guards with clearance to be in sensitive areas of the airport. Makes you wonder what might have happened if these presumed criminals had darker motives than swiping a nip of Grey Goose. What if they had a taste for something a little stronger — like maybe incinerating themselves and a planeload of passengers in a final, glorious act of Holy Jihad? Then on Friday, TSA screeners found a gun and ammunition in a traveler’s carry-on bag at one of the airports that should be most concerned with security: Reagan National Airport. Washington Metropolitan Airports Authority police reportedly confiscated the gun and magazine, which contained six rounds of ammunition, cited the passenger on weapons charges, and then — get this — let him catch his flight. Seriously. They let the guy fly. Given the total ineptitude of the TSA on display during a week when everyone was paying attention to airport security, the congressional panel’s statements seem so obvious, they’re almost redundant. “In many ways,” its report noted, “TSA has become its own worst enemy.” Specifically, the report cites the agency’s refusal to explain itself. Those canned statements from spokesmen come to mind, but Congress also says the agency has an established track record of telling us nothing of value when we ask questions about security procedures. “The American people could be more supportive of TSA if they understood why TSA was implementing a particular policy or procedure and what threat or vulnerability it was addressing,” it adds. “Instead, in the last eleven years the American people have become increasingly more critical of TSA.” And 11 years of stonewalling later, we have this ridiculous security circus. The TSA is asked about its porous security, its latest civil liberties violation, and it offers denial and double-talk. The terrorists aren’t the TSA’s enemy. Critics like you, me, and the American Congress, who demand accountability, aren’t either. Maybe, just maybe, the TSA has become its own worst enemy. |
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