More on airport pat-downs..
dallasnews.com
Pat-down complaints reveal fliers' ire
Objections dropped after TSA scaled back screeners' body searches
11:49 PM CDT on Sunday, August 14, 2005
By MICHAEL GRABELL / The Dallas Morning News
In the nine months since the Transportation Security Administration scaled back its oft-criticized pat-down search, the number of complaints about the procedure has plummeted.
Recently released documents covering the earlier period paint a troubling picture of the pat-downs' toll on airline passengers, especially rape victims and breast cancer patients.
In one incident, a Denver airport screener was patting around a passenger's breasts for explosives when the screener felt something strange. "What is this? What is this?" the screener demanded, because the passenger's breasts felt different.
Embarrassed and in pain, the passenger responded that she had just had reconstructive surgery on one breast and still had stitches. She said the screener hurt her when she "yanked and pulled" her breast.
The incident was detailed in one of hundreds of formal complaints about pat-downs, which required screeners to check passengers between and below the breasts.
The Dallas Morning News recently obtained the complaints under the Freedom of Information Act.
The TSA started using the full-body search in September after the bombing of two Russian airliners by passengers suspected of strapping explosives to their bodies. Short of expensive technology, the TSA said it had no other way to check people for explosives.
But after complaints poured in, the TSA quickly scaled back the policy. Just before Christmas, it limited pat-downs to situations in which a metal-detecting wand beeps or there is an "irregularity or anomaly in the person's clothing outline."
The number of complaints has fallen from 427 at its peak in November to 25 in July.
Despite its short lifespan, the pat-down policy did a number on the TSA's image.
It was spoofed on Saturday Night Live and mocked on the Internet. Soon after, a parody of the song "Leaving on a Jet Plane" started circulating with the chorus, "So frisk me to check for clues/Tell me to take off my shoes/Touch me, ask me what you need to know."
Widespread complaints
The News requested copies of the complaints in November and received them in late July. The TSA released 135 complaints filed between Oct. 12 and Nov. 20.
They came from 61 airports – from Boise, Idaho, to Boston, and from Kona, Hawaii, to Pensacola, Fla. Kansas City, Denver and Los Angeles had the most, with nine, eight and six, respectively. Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport had four.
The same descriptions were repeated in the complaints: Humiliated. Violated. Degraded. Disgusted. Offended.
Passengers compared it to a mammogram, a criminal search or a sexual assault.
In a September incident, a passenger at Montgomery Regional Airport in Alabama complained that she felt she was patted down as a punishment for not taking off her shoes.
'Extremely humiliating'
"She placed her hands on my breasts (every surface)," she said of the screener. "For me, someone touching me this way is extremely humiliating. My grandfather was a pedophile and he left NONE of his granddaughters untouched."
The names of passengers were blotted out by the TSA to protect their privacy.
In an incident in October, a woman at Kansas City International Airport was asked to remove her prosthetic breast during screening. The TSA employee then swabbed the breast to test for explosives while another screener patted her down. Finally, they called for a supervisor to decide what to do next.
"Although the screeners were just doing their job, she was still embarrassed that she would be asked to have her prosthetic breast removed and patted down by strangers," a TSA customer service representative wrote.
Part of the problem was that the TSA required the pat-downs for all passengers who couldn't go through metal detectors. That included people in wheelchairs or with hip and knee replacements, leading some passengers to suggest the policy was targeting the disabled. Other passengers felt the policy targeted women and the overweight.
The TSA also required the search for anyone selected by a computerized system that flags passengers who fly one way and book flights at the last minute. While that was intended to catch potential hijackers, the pattern is also common for business travelers and people who must plan trips for sick relatives or funerals.
One passenger, an employee of the Texas attorney general's office, described being patted down before a flight from Austin to Phoenix to visit her 18-year-old son who was in the intensive care unit, awaiting "a possible 11th brain surgery."
"I was already feeling terrible, but the young woman designated to search me began tapping me rather hard with her wand and laughed at me when I complained," she wrote.
The people who complained to the TSA ranged from parents of teenagers to the elderly. They included college professors, attorneys and pharmacists – even flight attendants and pilots.
An America West Airlines captain, flying from Oakland International Airport, complained in November that a screener put his fingers under his shirt collar and made "grasping motions" at his underarms and legs. The screener then brushed the back of his hand against his genitals, he wrote.
"I was humiliated and repulsed," he said. "That a uniformed, working crew member was subjected to this public date-rape is outrageous enough, but I don't want my passengers, who pay my salary, subjected to such abuse either. I'm all for security, but this defies all intelligence."
Some said they wouldn't fly anymore.
"I am currently considering whether or not to cancel my Christmas plans because now I live in fear of being selected for the special search again," a Morehouse College psychology professor wrote.
The TSA acknowledges that the procedure made passengers uncomfortable but says it was deemed necessary to improve its ability to detect explosives. The agency also notes that the percentage of people complaining was low compared with the millions of pat-downs.
'We listened'
"Without a doubt, we listened very intently to every complaint that we had," said Andrea McCauley, a TSA spokeswoman. "We had long discussions about how we could make the process more comfortable for everyone."
Since changing the policy, the TSA has installed about two dozen machines that check passengers' bodies for explosives. The agency says the new technology will further reduce the number of pat-downs. It plans to add 100 more machines in airports nationwide by January. |
