TSA: Protecting The Skies From Wheelchair-Bound 3-Year-Olds

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(By Andrew MacKie-Mason)

TSA "officers" in St Louis recently detained a 3-year-old wheelchair-bound girl, demanding to pat her down. The girl's parents were apparently even willing to allow the pat down, subject to the more-than-reasonable request that they be able to video record the screener, presumably to ensure that she remained appropriate.

The TSA "officer" in question, like many law enforcement "officials," apparently didn't take kindly to being met with anything less than total and immediate obsequience. She incorrectly informed the parents that it was illegal to record the video, and things seem to have snowballed from there.
TSA offered a half-baked apology to the family after the incident, but qualified the apology with a blog post full of attempts at justification and excuse. Here are some aspects of that blog post.

Our officer did initially mention a pat-down. We admit this was confusing, and contributed to a stressful situation. Very quickly, a manager was able to step in and give guidance.

The entire incident took over half an hour. Either the manager didn't arrive very quickly, or the manager wasn't much help.

Also, our officer told the passenger that it was illegal to film at the checkpoint. This is not the case, and you can take a look at our filming policy here.

If this was an isolated incident of a single TSA "officer" claiming that filming is illegal, it would be one thing. But it's not. Every single passenger-shot video of a TSA incident that I've seen includes at least one "officer" asserting that the filming is illegal. None of them are ever able to provide anything remotely approaching a citation for that assertion, but that doesn't stop them from harassing passengers until they stop filming.

In this case, the TSA "officers" were intimidating enough that the mother apparently didn't feel comfortable getting their faces on camera. That's unfortunate, because it means that the "officers" are shielded from the public scrutiny they deserve over this incident. Change only occurs where there's accountability.

Neither the child nor the parent was detained. TSA does not have the authority to detain passengers. Only Law Enforcement Officers can detain passengers.

Let's take a moment to admire the logic of this claim. TSA is using the fact that it's illegal for them to detain people as evidence that they did not detain them. "We didn't do anything wrong, because we're not allowed to do things wrong." I wish I'd known about that one when I was a child.

In fact, TSA detains people all the time. I've been detained by TSA "officers" on numerous occasions. Whenever a TSA "officer" tells you to stand in a certain spot and doesn't allow you to leave, you're being detained. They can play word games as much as they want, but the fact of the matter is they detain passengers whether they have the authority to or not.

Incidents like this can trigger a lot of emotions, but please keep the TSA’s mission in mind. We are committed to maintaining the security of the traveling public.

This is the epitome of everything that is wrong with TSA's attitude. In their minds, it apparently boils down to "we are trying to keep people safe. Anyone who says anything bad about us is getting in our way, and is therefore making the world more dangerous." I know it's trite, but who will protect us from TSA? Who will protect us from the "officers" who want to pat down 3-year-old girls without the accountability of video recording?

You can see the video shot by the mother (which covers only part of the incident) below.