Another Airport Overreaction?

[RedAngie]

This time at TSA security at Dallas /Ft.Worth. A boy neglected to remove his laptop, as required, from his carry-on bag, which triggered additional screening. A mother objects to the patdown her 13 year old son received and posted a video of it on her Facebook page. Then news stations picked it up. The video is in the following link.


http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/mo...gs-during-sons-pat-down/ar-BByX34P?li=BBnbcA1

A different article included her FB post:

We have been through hell this morning. They detained Aaron for well over an hour at DFW. (And deliberately kept us from our flight... we are now on an alternate) We were treated like dogs because I requested they attempt to screen him in other ways per TSA rules. He has SPD and I didn't want my child given a pat down like this. Let me make something else crystal clear. He set off NO alarms. He physically did not alarm at all during screening, he passed through the detector just fine. He is still several hours later saying "I don't know what I did. What did I do?" I am livid. Please, share... make this viral like the other children's videos with TSA... I wish I had taped the entire interchange because it was horrifying. We had two DFW police officers that were called and flanking him on each side. Somehow these power tripping TSA agents who are traumatizing children and doing whatever they feel like without any cause, need to be reined in.


Been through hell? Deliberately kept from her flight? Treated like dogs? Horrifying? Power tripping TSA agents traumatizing children??

Oh pul-leaze, Mom. The patdown was quite acceptable and the kid handled it with aplomb. If he's still asking several hours later what he did wrong it's because he's responding to your overly emotional Drama Queen antics.

 

[DisneyOma]

This time at TSA security at Dallas /Ft.Worth. A boy neglected to remove his laptop, as required, from his carry-on bag, which triggered additional screening. A mother objects to the patdown her 13 year old son received and posted a video of it on her Facebook page. Then news stations picked it up. The video is in the following link.


http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/mo...gs-during-sons-pat-down/ar-BByX34P?li=BBnbcA1

A different article included her FB post:

We have been through hell this morning. They detained Aaron for well over an hour at DFW. (And deliberately kept us from our flight... we are now on an alternate) We were treated like dogs because I requested they attempt to screen him in other ways per TSA rules. He has SPD and I didn't want my child given a pat down like this. Let me make something else crystal clear. He set off NO alarms. He physically did not alarm at all during screening, he passed through the detector just fine. He is still several hours later saying "I don't know what I did. What did I do?" I am livid. Please, share... make this viral like the other children's videos with TSA... I wish I had taped the entire interchange because it was horrifying. We had two DFW police officers that were called and flanking him on each side. Somehow these power tripping TSA agents who are traumatizing children and doing whatever they feel like without any cause, need to be reined in.


Been through hell? Deliberately kept from her flight? Treated like dogs? Horrifying? Power tripping TSA agents traumatizing children??

Oh pul-leaze, Mom. The patdown was quite acceptable and the kid handled it with aplomb. If he's still asking several hours later what he did wrong it's because he's responding to your overly emotional Drama Queen antics.

Mom's looking for some attention, money, and fame.

 

[okeydokey]

That pat down was disgusting. A full two minutes to feel all over a kid wearing shorts and a t-shirt. And a child to boot. I would be livid. Why were they delayed an hour?

 

[dish rag]

That pat down was disgusting. A full two minutes to feel all over a kid wearing shorts and a t-shirt. And a child to boot. I would be livid. Why were they delayed an hour?

Didn't look too bad to me. I fly several times a month and have been flagged several times. They explain very clearly what they are going to do and it's no big deal. It's life. It's part of what goes on. If your child can't deal with a potential TSA patdown then leave the child home. If the mother had handled this differently it might have done the boy some good in learning how to handle life.

 

[diznygirl]

That pat down was disgusting. A full two minutes to feel all over a kid wearing shorts and a t-shirt. And a child to boot. I would be livid. Why were they delayed an hour?

Probably because mom was throwing a hissy fit. I'm guessing: "We need to pat down" "Okay" Pat down. "Thank you. Enjoy your day" would have lasted all of 5 minutes.

If you child asks why: "Because they are being extra careful. Should we stop and get some gum for the flight?"

Honestly. There are some serious problems out there and this isn't one of them.

 

[sam_gordon]

I don't understand how leaving a laptop in a bag results in requiring a patdown. Just take the bag back to the front of the scanner, remove the laptop, and run it through again. Or do a manual inspection of the bag.

That being said, I have some problems with the mother's claims...
* They spent about an hour at the checkpoint (TSA says 45 minutes) and missed their flight. How close were they calling this? Granted, at my SMALL airport, I can get through security and be at my gate 15 minutes or less from stepping out of my car. This incident happened at DFW. Wouldn't you give yourself at least 90 minutes if not 2 hours?
* In the video I saw, the kid handled the pat down about as well as can be. If he truly "suffers from sensory processing disorder, which makes him sensitive to touch" (her words, or at least the ones in the linked article), wouldn't he have SOME kind of reaction to being touched by a stranger?
* Last but not least...

“His first question to me was, ‘I don’t understand why they did this. I don’t know what I did wrong,’ and to me that was a sign of trauma for him to think that he had done anything wrong,” Williamson said.

, wouldn't it have been easier to tell the teen "they are extra careful, even though WE know we're not doing anything wrong, they don't know us." And really? "a sign of trauma"?

 

[mom to minnie&mickey]

We flew to Hawaii last summer. During screening myself, dh, dd(18) made it through but ds(15) was, for some unknown reason, selected for a pat down.
He cleared the metal detector and no alarms sounded. Poor kid got a hand between the legs and everywhere else too. We joked about it throughout our vacation.
If she had not had a hissy fit they would not have missed their flight.

 

[ImDMous]

I get stopped for a pat down wherever there is a metal detector, backscatter is a joy for me. Granted, I'm not a teen anymore but they do tell exactly what they are doing, where they are going to check when, and it takes less than 5 minutes. Yes, they are thorough. By not taking the laptop out, it infers you are trying to hide it for some reason and yes, they are going to search you to see what else you might be hiding. Plenty of signs that say what to take out, plenty of announcements of what to take out, usually the guy manning the bins will tell you to your face what to take out. If it's still in the bag, that's on you. If you have nothing to hide, you spend 5 minutes on your frisk and you are on your way.

It does seem all the inferred distress and mental trauma are all coming from how mom reacted.

 

[okeydokey]

I don't understand why after they rubbed the front of his groin up and down he had to go back amd rub his groin from side to side. The entire thing is ridiculous. I have been subject to pat down before and it wasn't close to being this invasive, and I am an adult. This was total overkill for a child.

 

[sam_gordon]

By not taking the laptop out, it infers you are trying to hide it for some reason and yes, they are going to search you to see what else you might be hiding.

So it makes more sense that you're hiding something and not that someone just forgot to take out the laptop? Sorry, no.

Plenty of signs that say what to take out, plenty of announcements of what to take out, usually the guy manning the bins will tell you to your face what to take out. If it's still in the bag, that's on you. If you have nothing to hide, you spend 5 minutes on your frisk and you are on your way.

I totally agree with this. I have had plenty of times where I've forgotten to pull my 3-1-1 bag. It's never been mentioned.

 

[sam_gordon]

I don't understand why after they rubbed the front of his groin up and down he had to go back amd rub his ground from side to side. The entire thing is ridiculous. I have been subject to pat down before and it wasn't close to being this invasive, and I am an adult. This was total overkill for a child.

For the life of me I can't figure out what word you were trying to type. BTW, if you read the article or watched the video, you would have known TSA changed their pat down policy earlier this year. Instead of having multiple "levels" of pat downs, everyone gets a "full" one.

 

[undertheradar]

If her son has such personal issues, perhaps travel by plane might not be the best option. The laptop being "forgotten" in the bag was Mom's fault. All of this complaining and social media attention grab is simply to redirect attention away from the fact that TSA was doing what they are supposed to do.

 

[Marchand63]

That pat down was disgusting. A full two minutes to feel all over a kid wearing shorts and a t-shirt. And a child to boot. I would be livid. Why were they delayed an hour?

I am going with a whirling helicopter. Where were they flying to? Some countries are now forbidding devices so maybe.

 

[okeydokey]

For the life of me I can't figure out what word you were trying to type. BTW, if you read the article or watched the video, you would have known TSA changed their pat down policy earlier this year. Instead of having multiple "levels" of pat downs, everyone gets a "full" one.

sorry, autocorrect. It was his groin the man was rubbing, not the ground.

 

[SMD]

There's a quote from the mother where she says several hours later her son is asking what he did wrong. Simple, he didn't follow instructions to remove his laptop from his backpack. That act triggers a reaction by the TSA, period. I know that there are people who question the effectiveness of the TSA, but the fact remains that passing a screening is required to fly. It is 2017, and taking your laptop out of your bag is not a secret or something that can't be easily discovered in advance by people who have never flown before. There are also signs and verbal instructions at the screening points. In addition to scanning shoes and carryons, the TSA is also observing behavior. A failure to take your laptop out of your bag is an observed behavior. Even if it passed the scan, you've triggered the screening through non-compliance. If a an additional 40 minutes at the TSA checkpoint caused them to miss the flight, then I'd say that they were running late to being with. Now, from what I see on the video, that's the standard pat down procedure performed in a not unprofessional matter. Whether or not this mother agrees with the pat downs in general, I haven't seen anything in the video or her narrative that is grounds for an uproar. Maybe there's more to it, like an exchange with the TSA officials prior to the recording, but given what I've read from her so far, I tend to doubt it.

 

[Hikergirl]

Waa Waa, I want to fly but I don't want to follow any of the rules to fly. I'm so special and my child is too, we can leave what we want in our bags and shouldn't have to deal with any further security screening. I don't want to have to explain to my child he didn't do anything wrong, that this sometimes is what happens when we fly, it is just the TSA doing their job to make sure everyone, including us, is safe on the plane. I want him to think he is a victim of a horrible injustice, you know the injustice of having to follow security protocols. That shouldn't apply to us, we are too special for that.
Please make this video go viral just like all the others so that people know how entitled and special we are.

That is what I get from the article.
The kid looked fine in the video. Is the pat down excessive, maybe but apparently that is how they are done now.If you don't want to be pat down, take out your laptop next time.

 

[ronandannette]

A different article included her FB post:

We have been through hell this morning. They detained Aaron for well over an hour at DFW. (And deliberately kept us from our flight... we are now on an alternate) We were treated like dogs because I requested they attempt to screen him in other ways per TSA rules. He has SPD and I didn't want my child given a pat down like this. Let me make something else crystal clear. He set off NO alarms. He physically did not alarm at all during screening, he passed through the detector just fine. He is still several hours later saying "I don't know what I did. What did I do?" I am livid. Please, share... make this viral like the other children's videos with TSA... I wish I had taped the entire interchange because it was horrifying. We had two DFW police officers that were called and flanking him on each side. Somehow these power tripping TSA agents who are traumatizing children and doing whatever they feel like without any cause, need to be reined in.


Been through hell? Deliberately kept from her flight? Treated like dogs? Horrifying? Power tripping TSA agents traumatizing children??

Oh pul-leaze, Mom. The patdown was quite acceptable and the kid handled it with aplomb. If he's still asking several hours later what he did wrong it's because he's responding to your overly emotional Drama Queen antics.

I'm not familiar with this - I assume it's some type of disorder? What kind of condition is it that should exempt a person from a pat-down?

 

[wilkeliza]

I don't understand why after they rubbed the front of his groin up and down he had to go back amd rub his groin from side to side. The entire thing is ridiculous. I have been subject to pat down before and it wasn't close to being this invasive, and I am an adult. This was total overkill for a child.

Sadly it is the new pat down procedure. They also don't have to use the back of the hand anymore which has been the biggest part of sadly. I've met several men who say they feel like they are being violated because it does go closer to fondling in some cases. I've been through security with a guy where the TSA agent grabbing the guy's crotch. I totally understand security but I know as a woman I wouldn't be okay with someone grabbing my breasts or groin area to make sure I wasn't hiding anything.

 

[wilkeliza]

I'm not familiar with this - I assume it's some type of disorder? What kind of condition is it that should exempt a person from a pat-down?

Sensory Processing Disorder. It can create anything from an annoyance to violital reaction to touch, clothing, food texture, etc.

 

[Hikergirl]

Are pat downs done at random, or are they done when something is triggered, like not taking something out of your bag, or having the hand wipe thing come up with something?