Report: TSA apologizes for forcing boy heading to Disney to remove leg braces

Originally posted by downtown436
I don't accept their apology.

I hope the airlines are listening.

I will never fly again. Not because of this incident, but the entire sordid state of affairs of air travel.

No more for me. If I need to fly I will hire a pilot and rent a plane, charter a plane, or fly myself.

Screw you airline industry, I hope every last airline goes bankrupt.

The parents should here about AMTRAK. Oh yea, the train run by the feds. After all, you don't have to take your shoe's off for homeland security. or anything else. And Last I checked, there are several trains heading from the North East to Orlando and Miami.

Would have had a better time. LOL

How sad is it that a welfare program, said to be a waste by Crazy Conservatives is the way to go. LOL



[edit on 17-2-2010 by sirbikesalot06]

We fly a couple times a year with my daughter who is now 10. She is disabled, wears braces and in a wheelchair. Every time we have been through security she has been required to remove her braces. She has been allowed to remain in her chair (she can't walk at all). They do swab her chair and braces for explosives.

Originally posted by psyko45
"To me the guard did his or her job. If the passengers didnt like it they should have found alternate transpo. There are choices."


The security people obviously did not do their job, since the alternative swabbing was available. Anyway if an alarm is tripped, some security people go into Hitler mode, instead of being reassuring to people. Obviously a lack of training. Civility would be nice too, although that is not to say that is the case here, but all too often there is a desperate lack of it. No respect, and you actually pay for this crap. Too many of the wrong people in the wrong job.

[edit on 17-2-2010 by smurfy]

Originally posted by shadowmantn
We fly a couple times a year with my daughter who is now 10. She is disabled, wears braces and in a wheelchair. Every time we have been through security she has been required to remove her braces. She has been allowed to remain in her chair (she can't walk at all). They do swab her chair and braces for explosives.

No offense but don't you find that to be personally humiliating and insulting?

I can't imagine that you and your family look like you pose that kind of potential threat to your fellow passengers.

I just find it unbelievable that we as a nation, as an institution or subjecting average ordinary and even more especially disadvantaged people to this kind of scrutiny, suspicion and inconvenience.

It honestly makes me ashamed and makes me feel as we have all become a nation of fearful and distrustful cowards who have lost all common sense, decency and empathy.

I don’t honestly feel your child should be exposed to that kind of treatment and suspicion and I don’t feel that you as their parent deserve that either. It is in my humble opinion akin to adding insult to injury.

I am so sorry that is happening to you and yours.

Thanks for posting your experiences.

Here are some snippets from the TSA website re: civil rights.

We treat all members of the travelers in a manner free from unlawful discrimination, harassment or retaliation. To emphasize our commitment to TSA employees and the traveling public, TSA issued its Civil Rights Policy Statement

To ensure that the civil rights and liberties of the traveling public are respected throughout screening processes, without compromising security. The Division ensures that Agency processes and procedures do not discriminate against the traveling public, and abide by the constitutional freedoms of the traveling public.

The External Compliance Division meets its mission by providing civil rights guidance and services to TSA program offices, including security offices, technology offices, and communications offices; and by reviewing TSA policies and procedures to ensure that the civil rights and liberties of the traveling public are taken into account.

TSA Website Source - (if you are curious)

Ok now we heard the TSA side. Lets see it in practice shall we?

First up Body Scanners

Link to Video - Warning Some Nudity.....

Another one...

60 Mins talking to TSA - Nothing but Excuses!

Just for Good Humor..

[edit on 17-2-2010 by DaMod]

Cheers Damod for the links,
The reality is always different than the smarmy stuff from the operators, innit! I've seen the scanner pics before, but not the 60mins report. Two points of interest there, first the machines are hired, WTH $$$$. Second, the TSA spokesman says that the images are destroyed immediately, these scanners are complete computer suites costing millions. So what do you think? if someone gets by them with stuff, (and they have), then a plane falls out of the sky, and there are no images left to pinpoint a possible perpetrator, is that remotely believable, I don't think so. I'd go so far as to say, even at the experimental stage there was/is a biometric profile of people being built up, never mind the pervy opportunities.

[edit on 17-2-2010 by smurfy]

Well I for one am glad that we can all be proud of our system. The system which stops ALL 4 year old terrorists crippled or not! Especially this well disguised ,and obviously an Al-Qaeda member little boy. I mean so what if it was obviously a kid with messed up legs. Waiiiiitttttttttttttt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Maybe just maybe that ...... he could actually be a disabled kid?
In that case my bad! Especially to the kid who we are all talking about.


[ Messed up sentence]

[edit on 17-2-2010 by Gentill Abdulla]

TSA = Thugs Standing Around.

Never fails. When I'm travelling and in uniform, how come TSA always singles me out for some "special love" when I have to pass thru security?

Originally posted by Gentill Abdulla
Well I for one am glad that we can all be proud of our system. The system which stops ALL 4 year old terrorists crippled or not! Especially this well disguised ,and obviously an Al-Qaeda member little boy. I mean so what if it was obviously a kid with messed up legs. Waiiiiitttttttttttttt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Maybe just maybe that ...... he could actually be a disabled kid?

In that case that bad! Especially to the kid who we are all talking about.

Yes its true this little four year old crippled boy was recruited by Al Queda at the local day care once they realized his father was a Camden City New Jersey Police Officer.

They plied him with milk and cookies but the good Arabic kind without all the preservative and dyes and exploited the idealogical difference in how the Corporate West and the Agrarian East makes cookies to convince him to turn on his fellow country men.

They knew as a 4 year old he would not be interested in 40 virgins so they promised him 40 Barney Video Tapes to watch in heaven after he martyred himself and since he was crippled anyway he quickly agreed.

Instead of coming straight home from Daycare he would detour by the terrorist training camps in Afghanistan where he learned to shoot an AK-47, go through obsticle courses and make home made explosives and was supplied a list of other 4 year old El Queda operatives to assist him throughout the world!

Clearly the boy managed to cleverly ditch the explosives hidden in his braces while his father the Police Officer tried to pull rank and created a diversion for him to do so!

He is Dad and Mother and Grandparents and babysitter too should all be shipped off to Gitmo and waterboarded until they confess.

America sure has become one screwed up place. Even when you try to see the humor in this, there really is none.

Just an inflexible government machine trampling on the rights and dignity of citizens and couching it in doing it for our own protection.

I don't need that kind of protection, I need protected from that kind of bad government!

To put a disabled child through that is discrimination. They would damn well know he's not a terrorist.

Reminds me of a similar disgusting incident:

www.mda.org.au...
Mall compo
for disabled
brothers
TWO brothers have settled with
shopping centre giant Westfield
after one had to crawl to their car
and the other was carried because a
security guard forced themto abandon
centre-owned wheelchairs.
Tony and Ross Costa, who have
muscular dystrophy, were forced to
discard borrowed wheelchairs at
Fountain Gate shopping centre this
month. The brothers, aged in their
40s, had been able to borrow the
wheelchairs to get from the car park
to the centre. But when it came time
to go home, a guard would not allow
them to take the wheelchairs into
the car park.
The pair were in tears after the
security guard told them it was policy
not to allow centre wheelchairs
outside. Bollards prevented vehicles
reaching the entrance and their sister’s
car was parked three metres
away.
Their brother, Charlie Costa, said
they accepted Westfield’s offer to
pay $50,000 to the Muscular Dystrophy
Association as compensation.
‘‘Tony and Ross’ whole aim was,
it’s not about compensation, it’s
about dignity for themselves and
other people and making the public
aware of the whole situation and the
rights and wrongs,’’ he said.
Westfield has apologised for the
incident and changed its wheelchair
policy. AAP

Sorry it's pdf it's an older article. Imo the disabled people in these incidents are victims of power mongering plain and simple and not of someone merely going by the book. The "rules" are just an excuse to abuse.. it's obvious a 4 year old with leg braces is not planning to blow a plane up. That poor kid has to remember that humiliation now.. what a way to start off a trip to disney land.

Yes, this is disgusting, BUT...
Who is to blame? We are.
Let's say we had a choice between,
1. Truly private carrier, no TSA, you trust the airline.
2. What we have now.
How many people would opt for what we have now? Probably most, because they are sold on this b.s. terrorism threat.
Face it, most people are like cattle. You can even brand them.
Occasionally, one will grunt in protest. Most won't.
Pathetic.

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


It's just obvious that his so called "Juice Box" was a cleverly hidden bomb. Which by the way he planned to blow up Disney world with.Unfortunately the baby bottle pop he was using to hypnotize the guards malfunctioned ,and he is now suspected to be hidden somewhere around the brains of most of the guards there. In which case he will absolutely never be found.

reply to post by Gentill Abdulla


Maybe they just think family guy is a reality show.
I imagines Strewie in your scenario.

reply to post by riley


So did I! Well and the recruiter will probably be Rupert or someone!

Originally posted by Stewie
Yes, this is disgusting, BUT...
Who is to blame? We are.
Let's say we had a choice between,
1. Truly private carrier, no TSA, you trust the airline.
2. What we have now.
How many people would opt for what we have now? Probably most, because they are sold on this b.s. terrorism threat.
Face it, most people are like cattle. You can even brand them.
Occasionally, one will grunt in protest. Most won't.
Pathetic.

Thank you friend I would give you a thousand stars for that if I could!

We are in fact to blame because this system absolutely can not work without the people supporting it by complying with it.

To make a perfect example I live in Miami and occasionally the Public Access Channel airs films on the city’s history that the Wolfsonian Museum has archived.

One of the most hysterical things I have ever seen was one of those films when in the early 1960’s Miami Beach installed its first Pedestrian Walk/Don’t Walk Light and Crosswalk.

Of course none of the mostly elderly retired Jewish residents who lived in Miami Beach in those days wanted anything to do with the sign or the new rules for crossing the streets.

So the Miami Beach Police Department sent out Officers to write Jaywalking Tickets and inform and instruct the residents on the new ordinance.

In the film senior citizen after senior citizen scoffed and laughed at the police refused to give their names, sign or acknowledge the tickets or stop for the Officers. They all said the same thing, “What is this Nazi Germany? I am not signing nothing, I am not paying nothing, and how I cross the street is my own business, you going to arrest a little old man/lady?” and they would just walk off. It was hysterical the entire half hour film was like that, one citizen after another saying no!

Arrest me!

No!

Arrest me!

Amazingly this whole system is now based on fear, instilled fear at the notion that any one of us including a 4 year old crippled child could be a deadly terrorist even though you have statistically a better chance to be hit by lightening than a terrorist attack, and fear based on the TSA it’s rules and regulations.

Oddly enough travel for most people used to be a happy occasion, I am going to Disney Land, I am going to Grand Ma’s house, we are going to Vegas, we are going on our Honey Moon, I am going to sign that big deal!

Now its all about fear and inconvenience long lines and being dehumanized and manipulated and made to accept an imagined but strangling fear to the point it becomes real and palpable to where people could walk on by and not say a word to a 4 year old being branded, and humiliated and deprived of his leg braces!

That my friend could have never happened in 1962 when Americans still saw a value in American values.

It is our fault the question is when are we going to start doing something about it and acting like Americans?

What this really shows is how far we are willing to go to protect are country.
( AND Disney Land )But seriously we should put a limit on this thing. Under 4 you should be okay! Unless your name is Stewie Griffin!

I want to say two things here.

#1. I'm sure the TSA Agents could have screened the boy through successfully without having to remove the leg braces or cause any sort of problems of similar nature. The only reason they didn't was because they would rather pay thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars worth in compensation from civil suits against themselves rather than pay for the necessary hardware and equipment they could use that would enable them to avoid embarrassments like this.

#2. Bottom line--not to sound like Obama here, but... Make no mistake about it--TSA is a straight-up joke...! They might as well just hire greeters from Chilli's for pulling security in the airports.

The level of sadism that the TSA can dish out is enormous. One day it's a four year old in braces, last month an 80 yr old woman being screamed at because she was slow to respond to questions. Another month its a Nun that gets harassed and so on and so on. This is the height of ignorance and worse of all, we pay tax dollars for this mistreatment which from most indications is not desired by the American public. Yet I ask, why are we putting up with this fascist crap?

I comment about this because the level of sadism that is coming out of the TSA is equal to the sadism coming out of many other prominent areas of our governmental system. It is a representation of who and what type of idiots we will be facing when these same idiots start obeying orders to round up dissidents or anyone that doesn't like Obama's policies for extermination. It will be the same callous, ignorant and uneducated type of TSA idiots that we will be facing and I for one, will not lose sight of that small point.

We should pay attention to the level of ignorant sadism that we see in Law enforcement personnel, politicians, the military or just about any agency that has accepted the money necessary to become the evil arm of government.

One day soon and I hope its tomorrow, these idiots will have to answer for their injustices and when that day happens, the TSA idiots are going to learn something about fear and intimidation first hand and I for one hope no one shows any traitor to this nation any mercy for their crimes against America and its way of life because in my opinion they don't deserve anything but the wrath of angry Americans and a nameless grave.

reply to post by dazbog


Nope looks like you pretty much got it all, though it was a bit late and I was rather bleary when writing. Are you Spanish or something?

Cornholio perhaps? From Lake Ti-Ti Caca, somwhere in Nicaragua?


[edit on 19-2-2010 by psyko45]