Woman says TSA forced piercings removal

Well, i can see where you are all right. They gave that elite job to the cleaners and snack bar attendants, bathroom attendants at the airlines. But i'm trying to figure out, would absolute power be enough for ME to be blinded by this government and harass people to the point where they dont want to fly again?
I think it would take money for me (maybe) to be such an ass. But you all do have a point that power corrupts even a toilet cleaner.
I guess its just hard for me to understand. Maybe if they hired "professionals with a mind" things would be different?
They must know who to target and put into these jobs. Non thinkers.

I must just be very naive. All my life i've trained others to do good customer service and i just couldnt be persuaded otherwise.

It is good that they removed the nipple piercing with pliers - and that they did not remove the nipple alongside with the piercing with pliers. My guess is, that they really wanted to see her nipples. And they did. Ever wondered what happens - or better yet, will happen - to those who have piercings on their lower genitals?

reply to post by Souljah

That's what dirty books are for. If they want to see some, they can always go about it and take it to the "Sex Worker"! and pay $$ for it.
They're doing a job for Petes sakes. Morons!
I wonder if they would have gone thru all this for 70 year old grandmas who are also running around with tatoos and nipple piercings?

The problem here, like a lot of "Law Enforcement" in general, is that there is a complete lack of common sense applied by many of those tasked with upholding the law. There's no wiggle room allowed, no questions, just comply or suffer the consequences.
Hell, a lot of people I have seen in law enforcement have no idea about some of the laws they are enforcing and will openly state you are breaking some such law and get all aggressive when you point out they are full of crap

So, back to the screeners. I saw a piece a week or so ago about another traveller, detained by screeners who ended up missing his flight because his laptop "wasn't right". He was put in an interview room while screeners huddled together discussing his laptop, until a more tech savvy employee explained things to them. The problem was that the screener could not see a hard disk on the imager, so assumed that something was wrong. Turns out it was a new MacBook with a solid state drive, but at no point was he asked to explain things.
It's this sort of thing that pisses people off, the assumption that they know better and half the time probably couldn't spot something untoward anyway.
I've been given the third degree and lecture on the heinous crime of having a cigarette lighter in my carry on bag, even after surrendering it to screeners and walking away then being called back for the lecture by a supervisor who came hurrying up the corridor waving it

They all have to stamp their little bit of authority on travelers, let us know they are watching us carefully.

I jus heard on a local station that:

She had not removed the nipple rings in 8 years! Skin was growing around the piercing and she was in excrutiating pain. Also the TSA agents were all standing around laughing!

She's got a good case. I also heard the MALE TSA agent offered to pat her down instead. She said no.

IF THEY DID NOT offer a FEMALE TSA agent, she's going to have a nice sum of money with a good lawyer.

There is no law or rule against wearing piercings.

So, she set the alarm off. Male ATS agent said she had to remove her nipple rings or be submitted to a pat down by HIM.

Uh uh.

I know I made light of this when first reading the report but as more and more details are revealed I think the victim has been treat absolutely appalingly and should pursue her complaint as far as possible.

If I had been treat in a similar way then I suspect that I would be facing serious charges as I do not respond very well to such treatment, but then again, I'm a 6ft 2 male and I suspect wouldn't be treat in the same way.
People like this really boil my piss!

The poor woman must have felt absolutely disgusted and violated.

All I can say is *OWWWW!*...this brought tears to my eyes!

Perhaps someone could turn the embarrassment tables in the security staff instead...remember the scene from Spinal Tap as they pass through the airport?
One of them has a cucumber wrapped in tinfoil down the front of his trousers and causes much embarrassment to the guard who sweeps him with the wand after he sets off the static metal detector

Another huge problem with airport security, aside from the appallingly poor quality of the screeners themselves, is a lack of leadership, oversight and transparency. There's no real rules for these people to follow other than vague generalities. There's not a lot of formal training telling them "If you see THIS, you do THAT." There's no hard line drawn that they're not allowed to cross. And, there's nobody in any real position of authority who can come over and say, "Um, guys, lay off-you're not allowed to do that". Even if such "leaders" do exist they'd likely be as poorly-paid as the screeners anyway, and have no real interest in controlling their subordinates.

The end result is a typical "frat boy" mentality, where everyone outside the "System" is the Enemy, everyone "inside" is pissed because they're paid peanuts for a job they know is important, and they take out their frustrations on innocent travelers who just want to get where they're going with a minimum of fuss. Nobody steps in to stop them or make sure they're doing it "right" because nobody really knows what the "right way" is. Meanwhile, any real terrorist determined to do something terrible has plenty of holes to waltz through. It would almost be funny, if the stakes weren't so high.

When a person pierces their nipples or has tattoos or dresses irregularly they need to own their decision to be out of conformity. We that draw attention to ourselves have no right to expect all people to not stare or treat us strangely.

I am a grandmother with tatts and a few piercings. I dress as I please which definitely does not conform to the norm. But when people look at me I smile and go on about my business. When I attend political affairs of the formal nature I do not cover my tatts on my uh chest. It is normal for folks to look at us and treat us differently. Be man/woman enough to own your decision to be different.

Nasty is the only thing I can say about the woman that had the nipple ring that had grown into her body. Apparently she does not take proper care of her piercings. I wonder if puss spewed out when she tried to remove the object from her nipple.

What is going on with all this holier than thou attitude against people that work for minimum wage? Check your attitudes people. How many of you do not work at all? How many of you did or still do work for minimum or just barely over minimum wage? Are all workers at fast food joints stupid and ignorant?

There are always two sides to every story. We have heard only the poor pitiful pierced nipple woman's side.

What was her attitude? I would like to see the video of what happened.

I have sat in restaurants and airport terminals and watched people treat workers very badly. Are the minimum workers beneath us? Do they deserve to be treated as lower humans? I think not.
When I visit my daughter I sometimes help her out in the restaurant she owns. People think I am a waitress working there. I have been treated like scum under many customers feet. Why is that?

Somebody has to do the dirty work. Can we not treat them with respect and try to understand why they may behave as they do?

I shall reserve judgement on this matter until all the facts are presented.

In the mean time, I will treat minimum wage employees just as I do others in a higher tax bracket.

We saw the video of the woman who was detained a few months ago and died in custody of airport officials. Hopefully we will be seeing the video of the nipple incident. We may then know the rest of the story.

Dizzie

This is not funny but is to me because last year we took the kids to fly out to visit family and me and my boyfriend have nip piercings and his not mine set off the wands but they had to take him aside to make sure and when he kept saying that is was probly the rings they still made him go to the side and wand him agian and agian and even tho the guy was nice one guy walked up to me and I thought him and some others were laughing at him and we spoke and he looked at me and said he better hope thats all and my boyfriend has long hair so I dont know what the guy ment buy that but the more i thought about it the more pizzed I got because he was asuming that because of the way he looked or because he had alot of piercings that he probly was doing something wrong very scarey people very scarey its comeing down to this hate to see how its gonna be 5 yrs from now because it seems since all these new laws are in affect that noone can vote them out now and it seems noones fighting them and if they are its a no win situation sad times my friend great post

sorry I clicked the post twice thinking it didnt post and it did twice sorry about that

[edit on 28-3-2008 by LadyInRed]

this girl is gonna be sitting on a nice chunk of change for what they did to her....good

reply to post by dizziedame

Nobody is saying they are lesser people- they are people who never had any jobs where they made decisions and here they are given the power to do basically what they want to do. They're not handling it very well.

BESIDES_ Dont ever judge anyone working at a McDonnalds or a bathroom cleaner. Peoples lives change as time goes by. I have held very prominent jobs, and when that was over, i moved to Cape Cod and my first job here was working at Dunkin Doughnuts getting doughnuts ready in the morning and i killed myself working for $7.00 an hour- where before i was making almost $40,000 and was jetsetting all over the place.

The point here is that they are not giving these jobs to qualified people.
As long as they pass clearance and are willing to do it, they get the jobs.

I think therefore, if they're going to hire a toilet cleaner, at least check at the background to see if theres anything there that would qualify for a job that involves making some rational decisions, common horse sense.
They could weed out some of the ones who could never handle that job.

Originally posted by jpm1602
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Especially in the hand of a Barney Fife wanna be. Poor lady, what an outrage.

I learned driving a truck and dealing with rent-a-cops that Barney Fife was leading a double life as a playboy. That's the only way he could have so many bastard children roaming loose.

TheRedneck

you know, right or wrong, the tsa actually did their job by the book. i don't agree with the rule in place, or a lot of the stupid stuff we have to do for tsa, but in this case they were following their orders correctly. if the lady wanted to board the flight, she has to comply with the rules written just like everyone else. it's not the duty of tsa agents to make acceptions to the rule.

which gets to my story. i'm a frequent flyer. i purchased a tube of toothpaste once in canada at an airport in one of those "travel safe" type sections. because it was a product sold in canada, it's weight is printed in metric (110ml, legal by tsa standards). so imagine my confusion and frustration when going through a checkpoint in oakland, ca that the tsa agent informs me that my container is too large, but that she would "do me a favor" and "let me slide just this time". when i informed her of the existence of the metric system and insured her it was travel safe, she was immediately offended and talked it over with 4 different tsa employee's while they all gawked dumbfoundedly at the 110ml printing while searching top to bottom for a reading of the content weight in ounces. even though OAK is an international airport, and tsa claims it's employee's are highly trained, and even have a blurb on their site about metrics, these employee's were completely ignorant. a large man from the back comes in, takes the container from them and agree's it is illegal and tosses it about 6-8 feet into the nearest trash and stares me down. after i tell him they're all a bunch of idiots (in other words), he digs it out of the trash can and takes it over to another tsa agent who immediately recognizes that 110ml is safe for travel. the guy hands me back my toothpaste and says "thank you sir". all this after about 10 minutes of fighting with tsa, having them tell me that i "better buy some breath mints" and other verbal jabs.

so yes, tsa employees are not superhumans, nor are they even guaranteed to have average intelligence. however in the "nipple piercing" case, i can agree that they were at least doing their job as outlined to them. hopefully at the very least, this issue will bring to light the fact that many of these ridiculous rules and practices set by tsa will be ammended.

the TSA hires mainly minorities at tiny wages so it doesnt seem like they are racist. what they should do is hire retired police officers.. atleast they know what to look for, or could be taught what to look for, unlike the TSA employees we have now

ooookay the american way I wonder when it will be adopted in europe

Does anyone think that we are approaching those "V for Vendetta" times where someone is going to do something very stupid and flick the first domino to a chain of events?

Firstly, we have the possibility that many people would never deal with this type of treatment and act out in a violent manner. That will only heighten security.

Then finally we get to that moment when these dorks get so overpowered by their positions that they overstep their bounds to the nth degree, and suddenly the crowd reacts.

It'll go from protests to militias in a hurry when those people with level heads see no other option.

I'm probably being way to grandiose, but I think that "militia mentality" horse will have its back broken by a straw soon.



[edit on 3/28/08 by SantaClaus]

i had one of these highly trained terrorist detectors give me a veiled racial slur, because she didnt like the way i put my sneakers in the tub. it happened in philadelphia.psychological testing should be mandatory for this job.
but you gotta hand it to 'em. they took terrorism and made a billion dollar industry out of it,with the lowest possible investment... just like larry silverstein!
and i've always wondered...why do sneakers fit the terrorist profile?

and i would have to see the nipple rings to make a sound judgment. hey! does that qualify me to be a tsa agent? or would i have to get the required labotomy too?

[edit on 29-3-2008 by Spectre0o0]

[edit on 29-3-2008 by Spectre0o0]

Originally posted by Souljah
It is good that they removed the nipple piercing with pliers - and that they did not remove the nipple alongside with the piercing with pliers. My guess is, that they really wanted to see her nipples. And they did. Ever wondered what happens - or better yet, will happen - to those who have piercings on their lower genitals?

Ha, yes! I was thinking abuot genital piercings also. What a crazy story: CRAZY! She should go to court! And get as much money she can get. What a bunch of idiots! As if the piercings were any kind of threat. When screening personnel start to confuse piercings with weapons....