“I am a good American and I want safety for all passengers as much as the next person. … But if this country is going to sacrifice treating people like human beings in the name of safety, then we have already lost the war.”
That is from comments made by a breast cancer survivor who was forced to show TSA agents her prosthetic breast during a pat-down. In another incident, a male airline passenger who has to wear a urostomy bag as the result of treatment for bladder cancer, ended up covered in urine and reduced to tears after TSA agents broke the bag during a pat-down — despite the man’s warnings:
A retired special education teacher on his way to a wedding in Orlando, Fla., said he was left humiliated, crying and covered with his own urine after an enhanced pat-down by TSA officers recently at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.
“I was absolutely humiliated, I couldn’t even speak,” said Thomas D. “Tom” Sawyer, 61, of Lansing, Mich.
Sawyer is a bladder cancer survivor who now wears a urostomy bag, which collects his urine from a stoma, or opening in his stomach. “I have to wear special clothes and in order to mount the bag I have to seal a wafer to my stomach and then attach the bag. If the seal is broken, urine can leak all over my body and clothes.”
On Nov. 7, Sawyer said he went through the security scanner at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. “Evidently the scanner picked up on my urostomy bag, because I was chosen for a pat-down procedure.”
Due to his medical condition, Sawyer asked to be screened in private. “One officer looked at another, rolled his eyes and said that they really didn’t have any place to take me,” said Sawyer. “After I said again that I’d like privacy, they took me to an office.”
Due to his medical condition, Sawyer asked to be screened in private. “One officer looked at another, rolled his eyes and said that they really didn’t have any place to take me,” said Sawyer. “After I said again that I’d like privacy, they took me to an office.”
Sawyer wears pants two sizes too large in order to accommodate the medical equipment he wears. He’d taken off his belt to go through the scanner and once in the office with security personnel, his pants fell down around his ankles. “I had to ask twice if it was OK to pull up my shorts,” said Sawyer, “And every time I tried to tell them about my medical condition, they said they didn’t need to know about that.”
Before starting the enhanced pat-down procedure, a security officer did tell him what they were going to do and how they were going to it, but Sawyer said it wasn’t until they asked him to remove his sweatshirt and saw his urostomy bag that they asked any questions about his medical condition.
“One agent watched as the other used his flat hand to go slowly down my chest. I tried to warn him that he would hit the bag and break the seal on my bag, but he ignored me. Sure enough, the seal was broken and urine started dribbling down my shirt and my leg and into my pants.”
The security officer finished the pat-down, tested the gloves for any trace of explosives and then, Sawyer said, “He told me I could go. They never apologized. They never offered to help. They acted like they hadn’t seen what happened. But I know they saw it because I had a wet mark.”
You know, despite all the uproar over the body scanners — over the technology itself and the conflicts with bodily privacy — the bigger problem, as usual, is with human beings much more than it is with inanimate objects and machines. Living, breathing, flesh-and-blood TSA employees have a choice about the attitudes they will assume and the words they will use and the way they choose to physically conduct the screenings and the pat-downs — and obviously these TSA employees did not give a good goddamn about the dignity of the human being standing before them. Pres. Obama said today that he realizes the invasive technology creates a “frustrating” situation for passengers, but what happened to these two passengers and what has happened to many others is not “frustrating.” It’s outrageous. These incidents are not mere inconveniences. They are violations of basic human rights.
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