Father outraged by TSA pat down of his 10-year-old daughter, shows it in youtube in slow-mo

[Liberal_in_LA]

&feature=autoshare


https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=&w=1484

But a TSA spokesman said that the pat-down followed agency guidelines.

“TSA screening procedures allow for the pat down of a child under certain circumstances,” the spokesman said in a statement. “The process by which the child was patted down followed approved procedures.”

The footage, which has now received wide media attention, shows an agent calmly frisking the girl, who is holding her arms out to the side. Her father films from the other side of a glass partition. Payne annotated the clip, describing the pat down it as invasive, a “heinous act” that “makes me sick to my stomach.”

“She just had a completely blank stare on her face,” Payne told NBC’s Today show. “I could tell it was very uncomfortable for her.”

Payne told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that he plans to file a formal complaint.

[cwydro]

1. So he broadcasts it for everyone to see...

Thanks Dad.

[Liberal_in_LA]

3. in slow mo with commentary

[cwydro]

5. And put it on every morning news show...

Sheesh, at least blur her face.

Poor kid.

[renate]

12. blech. some parents....

From what I saw on our local news, she had a juice box she wasn't supposed to have. That's a parent's fault, not the TSA's.

And TSA agents know that decoys are often sent through security to check for thoroughness, so however much the agent may have doubted this little girl was one of the bad guys, she still had to do her job.

I hadn't thought about the hypocrisy of his showing the recording to the entire world, though. You are so right.

[MADem]

78. Before the days of TSA, I served as one of those decoys in a military setting.

I felt kind of bad doing it, but I was in no position to refuse (I was traveling as a courier and needed the ride). I successfully managed to smuggle explosive material past a military checkpoint that was set up just the way your average TSA checkpoint is set up. It wasn't that hard.

I gave the stuff to the MAC commanding officer after I passed through into the sterile zone, and boarded my flight.

I often wondered if that poor slob was re-trained or fired.

[uppityperson]

45. The creepiest part is the dads commentary and slow motion crap. I would be concerned about

him and that child's safety with a parent that confuses that part down with groping groping groping groping groping groping groping groping groping.

He is seriously wtf creepy.

[GreatGazoo]

69. +1

Possibly some projection and deflection in his reaction to this pat down.

He seems to easily let his own needs and feelings eclipse, or stand in for, those of his daughter. That he sees this pat down as humiliating and invasive for his daughter (and it IS but no more so than any pat down I have received) and yet puts on YouTube in slow-mo for all to see says something about his capacity for denial. The guilt mechanism in humans often means that the worse something is the greater the need to deny it publicly and in this case that points perhaps to something creepy.

[uppityperson]

89. Yup. If he really cared, he'd have contacted a lawyer vs posting it like this

[yeoman6987]

81. I hope the dad get as much money out of these groppers as possible

What they did to that little 10-year old girl is criminal. A true tragedy in America.

[uppityperson]

87. Cuing up Inigo Montoya for you

[Warren Stupidity]

75. Let the victim blaming begin!

Well done.

[snooper2]

84. Yeah so people can see the sick fucks that the TSA are, oh, and mostly pretty stupid

Every time I go through the airport you can tell the TSA agents had Wendy's as the last job on their resume.

[EdwardBernays]

2. Wtf

Has happened to America.

[HassleCat]

4. This is what we wanted

We demanded absolute security. Then we changed our minds and decided only dusky people with beards and hijabs should be hassled. We get what we ask for. If we don't want this, we can disband TSA and let "contractors" wave people through until they see someone who looks middle eastern, at which time they will shoot to kill. If that's what we want. Problem is, everybody wants heavy security imposed on others, but not people like themselves

[jberryhill]

9. The thing with profiling...

...is that if there was a "no searching kids" rule, then I know where I'm hiding my bomb.

[Nye Bevan]

14. Yes. ISIS would be recruiting 10-year old San Diego girls on family vacations.

I feel so much safer with our wonderful TSA.

[LittleBlue]

16. Exactly

Patting down people who obviously couldn't conceivably have a bomb is ridiculous. Especially when they're just add ons to prove we aren't racially profiling, which we obviously are doing.

[jberryhill]

24. Why is it inconceivable?

[LittleBlue]

27. Because there is no history little American non-Muslim girls being recruited

as suicide bombers.

We're only including them so that we can pretend we're not racially profiling. Nor are old women in wheel chairs at risk of being recruited.

We might as well admit we're profiling since we're doing it anyway and stop inconveniencing people for appearances.

[jberryhill]

33. There is no need to "recruit" them

Any more than it is necessary to "recruit" infants to put cocaine in their diapers.

It is also impossible to slip something into the backpack of a distracted child. Utterly impossible.

[philosslayer]

35. How do you know she's not a Muslim?

Please enlighten us as to what Muslims look like. Because certainly, they all look the same, right?

And how do you know here father isn't a teabagger and determined to get an explosive onto a plane?

What a ridiculous post.

[LittleBlue]

42. Her name and her father

He would probably have changed his name or grown a beard if he were an extremist.

Do teabaggers have a history of suicide bombing? No, so that's why that argument fails.

The profile for suicide bombers is nearly universal. Why pretend it's not? And why pretend this little girl fits any known profile?

We do this to pretend our obvious profiling process isn't based on race and religion, when in fact it is. And it will continue to be regardless of however many random people not fitting the profile we include to pretend we aren't.

[philosslayer]

43. You're in favor of profiling

We all get it.

[Nye Bevan]

46. Should a 25-year old guy from Yemen who bought a 1-way ticket, paying in cash,

draw more scrutiny from the TSA than a 10-year old girl from San Diego on a family vacation that was booked months ago?

I would have to say "yes". Does this make me a despicable profiler and a horrible person in your opinion?

[LittleBlue]

51. We already do it

I'm in favor of admitting it.

Muslims aren't dumb. They know they're being profiled if you read any account of what they go through at the airport. Single, young Muslim men are nearly always chosen to go through additional screening. I don't see a point in lying to ourselves just so we can feel good.

Profiling doesn't have to just be about race and religion. Age (like this girl's case), nationality, family members and sex are good indicators of potential suicide bombers.

[HassleCat]

90. You are not correct

Single, young, Muslim men are not frequently selected for additional screening. They are if they are from particular countries. American Muslims are not selected particularly often. Profiling does not work in a country such as ours, where Christians may be dark and swarthy, while Muslims may be blonde and fair.

[anigbrowl]

67. Not inconceivable

One, you're looking for something you haven't seen before, two there are lots of other possibilities besides a bomb. A 10 year old might not think anything significant about being asked to carry a parent or sibling's pocketknife, for example. Recall that the 9-11 hijackers used boxcutter knives, nothing elaborate. As for her not being Muslim, I don't think that's the only security risk out there either although it's the one most people are on the lookout for.

I am not a fan of security theater either but don't think this scenario is as inconceivable as you imagine. Terrorists of all nationalities have employed children at times because they're easy to manipulate and less suspect than adults.

[jberryhill]

18. I don't understand your point

First, ISIS is by no means the only entity that is potentially interested in screwing with airplanes.

Second, it is not necessary to "recruit" a child in order to conceal something on a child. Smugglers use small children and infants all of the time.

The reason she went to secondary was because of a package of Capri Sun in her backpack. I've flown with children a number of times and if Dad had checked her backpack before getting to security, she wouldn't have gone to secondary in the first place.

The domestic terrorists in Oregon have lots of kids and they demonstrated at the original Bundy ranch confrontation that they are perfectly willing to use them. They intentionally moved women and children into what they believed would be the line of fire directed at them. So I don't understand why you think it is impossible for a white child to be used by an ill-intended adult.

Millions of children will board airplanes this year with no incident. I fly about two times a month, and never manage to catch sight of any of these outrageous incidents. No system involving human interaction on that scale is going to be incident free, but I can't figure out how I logged 65,000 miles last year and not once managed to witness any inappropriate behavior by the screeners.

On the other hand, the TSA agent who checks tickets at B concourse at PHL regularly gets a raft of shit from passengers because she wears a hijab.

If this guy wants every pervert on the internet watching his kid being patted down, I guess that's up to him.

[Nye Bevan]

23. Why does a forgotten juice box necessitate a full-body grope?

Why not just confiscate the Capri Sun?

[jberryhill]

29. What makes it a "forgotten" juice box

A few weeks ago, an airliner was brought down by a soda.

In the UK, a plot was disrupted that would have used a two-component liquid explosive.

On the way to the checkpoint at every airport there are signs, videos and a disposal bin for liquids.

This might suggest to a passenger, or an adult supervising child passengers, to take a moment to check their carry-on to see if perhaps they contain any liquids.

Having had someone reminded umpteen times not to have any liquids show up at the checkpoint with liquids, you might be inclined to wonder how they missed all that. But, oh, there is a magic aura around "forgotten" ones, which you can immediately look at to determine that it was not put there by an adult for some reason. I'd love to know how you make that objective determination. By skin color?

[Nye Bevan]

36. So your concern is that the Capri Sun juice box was, in fact, a bomb.

But presumably the TSA inspected the juice box when they confiscated it and determined that it was not, in fact, a bomb, but a perfectly innocent Capri Sun juice box.

Now, would a real terrorist draw attention to themselves by adding a normal juice box to the luggage in which they had planted their deadly weapon? Or to the luggage of the little girl on whose person they had cunningly concealed something nefarious? No way, they would make sure that this luggage would attract as little attention as possible. So if anything, the presence of a cardboard Capri Sun juice box makes it less likely that the little girl was a pawn of the evil terrorists.

[TipTok]

71. Kabuki theatre with a 96% fail rate...

Don't you feel safe...?

[Nye Bevan]

73. Populated by self-important jumped-up wannabe cops

who take an absolute delight in strutting around, yelling, inconveniencing people, confiscating plastic Buzz Lightyear guns, and patting down grandmothers in wheelchairs.



Assholes.

[TipTok]

74. TSA is definitely the bottom tier of the security pecking order...

... ranking below mall security and meter maids who actually provide a service.

[Empowerer]

64. Exactly

Many of the same people who demanded that we tighten security and dismissed anyone who complained with "if you don't have anything to hide, you have nothing to fear" and "we must give up a little freedom in order to protect ourselves" are the ones who scream loudest when THEY are the ones subjected to the scrutiny they claimed was so important and harmless . . .

[librechik]

88. TSA says such examination of 10 yr old is OK in "certain circumstances"

Since these circumstances are "certain" I would sure like to know what provoked it.

[davidn3600]

6. Sacrificing freedom for security

That's America now. Get used to it.

[Lizzie Poppet]

17. And worse, we didn't even get security.

We got security theater.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

83. Yep. Not too long after 9/11, I had a customer who was a Chicago K-9 cop.

She laughed when I commended her for being on duty at O'Hare airport. She said they were just there to put on a show. They had an empty Humvee parked at each terminal entrance and Illinois National Guard people walking around whith, what was later to be exposed, unloaded M-16s.

[Logical]

49. People scare easily. TSA is a joke. nt

[840high]

7. There's more to the story. I think

he's looking for his 15 minutes and using his daughter.

[anigbrowl]

68. That's my read

If he was really serious he'd take this to a lawyer. His Youtube video is oddly creepy. I feel sorry for the daughter, who is being made into a public spectacle. Apparently it didn't occur to him to blur her face or something even though that's very easy to do and news organizations do it as a matter of course to protect privacy, so it's not a new idea.

[Nye Bevan]

8. To be fair, 10-year old girls from San Diego are a known terrorist demographic.

Can't be too careful, you know.

[Liberal_in_LA]

10. she left capri juice box in her backpack, it wasn't just a random pull for pat down

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/01/06/father-outraged-by-tsa-pat-down-of-his-10-year-old-daughter/

[Nye Bevan]

13. Whoa. A 10-year old girl with a juicebox? That's very scary.

I think we can all be thankful of the TSA's tireless work to keep us safe.

[jberryhill]

22. Or a can of soda

[Nye Bevan]

25. Whoa. That's a photo of what the girl had?

My apologies, I take it all back. I mistakenly thought it was a simple cardboard juice box.

[jberryhill]

31. The container is irrelevant.

So, in your capacity as an engineer, you have determined that it is impossible to compromise a juice box along the bottom cardboard seam, remove the contents, substitute the contents with another liquid, and reseal the adhesive at the bottom. It is also impossible to place it into a child's backpack to be combined with other components after the checkpoint!

Ah, yes, it has to be a yellow soda can!

[Nye Bevan]

40. Do you think that the TSA confirmed that it was actually an innocent juice box,

and not the elaborately disguised bomb that you are fearful about?

Assuming that they did, what's the point of the full body patdown?

[Calista241]

47. that's a photo released by Isis of the bomb the say brought down the Egyptian airliner.

The girl in this video had nothing like that.

[grntuscarora]

15. Eeek, a juice box.

I mistakenly had a jar of green chile sauce in my carry-on, and all they did was confiscate it with a heartfelt apology. No frisking involved.
These pat-down,/gropes seem to be given at random.

[jberryhill]

19. Yes, there is a randomization component

If there was a predictable pattern to searches, what would you do in order to smuggle a weapon?

[grntuscarora]

28. If I were a terrorist, which I most definitely am NOT,

knowing how random the system is I would think it an invitation to try my luck.

[Nye Bevan]

30. TSA failed to detect banned items in 67 out of 70 tests.

Washington (CNN)The Department of Homeland Security said Monday that the acting administrator for the Transportation Security Administration would be reassigned, following a report that airport screeners failed to detect explosives and weapons in nearly every test that an undercover team conducted at dozens of airports.

According to a report based on an internal investigation, "red teams" with the Department of Homeland Security's Office of the Inspector General were able to get banned items through the screening process in 67 out of 70 tests it conducted across the nation.

The test results were first reported by ABC News, and government officials confirmed them to CNN. Mark Hatfield, acting deputy director, will take over for Melvin Carraway until a new acting administrator is appointed. It was not immediately clear Tuesday where Carraway would be reassigned.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/01/politics/tsa-failed-undercover-airport-screening-tests/

But never fear, when it comes to 10-year old girls with juice boxes, they've got it covered.

[jberryhill]

34. So your point is that they are not aggressive enough?

[Nye Bevan]

37. My point is that they are poorly trained and/or incompetent (nt)

[grntuscarora]

41. Frisk all of us with green chile sauce/juice boxes,

or don't frisk any of us.
I had just as much cause to be frisked as that 10 year old kid, but they didn't.
A little consistency, please, is all I request.

[kwassa]

59. Why? Because she is a white 10-year old girl from San Diego ?

Such girls are obviously innocent.

now, non-whites ....

[LanternWaste]

70. Sounds as unconcerning as a quiet, random housewife from San Bernardino.

Sounds as unconcerning as a quiet, random housewife from San Bernardino.

Can't be too whimsical and fancy free, you know.

[Nye Bevan]

72. Tashfeen Malik was from Pakistan and had lived in Saudi Arabia. (nt)

[tularetom]

11. Sacrificing freedom for security

In other words I am willing to sacrifice somebody else's freedom for my security. My freedom? No, not so much.

I feel sorry for the kid. Partly because the pat down seemed a bit rough, but mostly because she has an asshole for a dad.

[tblue37]

20. I was watching the TSA agent. She seems to be trying to smile and

chat with the child to make her feel more comfortable. I bet the agent has kids of her own and was trying to be nice to the kid. In fact, I suspect that she was so focused on trying to help the child feel more at ease that she ended up not paying enough attention to part of the patdown process and that might be why she had to repeat a couple of moves.

These agents' jobs are on the line if a decoy is sent through to test whether they are vigilant enough and following procedure. Those decoys would not be obvious "terrorist" types, but rather people you would never suspect.

[Nye Bevan]

39. The way to make the child comfortable would have been to wave her through,

and tell her to have a nice flight, after confiscating the juice box.

Nobody in this thread has yet given a credible explanation about why a cardboard juice box in a backpack necessitates a full body patdown.

[Jim Beard]

62. Her cell phone also started ringing while she was being patted down.

Daddy wanted his 15 minutes. TSA had every right to follow procedure.

[Nye Bevan]

63. Ah, they probably concluded that one of her evil ISIS cohorts was calling her.

Go TSA.

[geek tragedy]

21. first world problems nt

[brettdale]

26. then again

What would the reaction be here be, if this had of been a african american child or
a muslim child.

[jberryhill]

32. The comments upthread suggest that would be fine

[geek tragedy]

44. Kid getting a polite pat down in airport security? Meh. nt

[Logical]

50. They have you fooled. nt

[LiberalElite]

38. Yo tone deaf dad -

she may not have appreciated you documenting it on a video either.

[FLPanhandle]

48. I go through TSA security over 50 times a year

If you follow the rules and don't bring anything forbidden through, then it's a breeze.

Also, I'm okay with profiling as it stops some of the silliness of patting down American 10 year old's but people would complain about profiling. So guess what? Everyone gets the same treatment.

[phylny]

61. Not my experience,

as a 57-year-old white woman.

I've been subjected to a pat-down twice. Once, right after breast cancer surgery and I was extremely tender. It was not fun.

I had nothing on me that was prohibited.

[vaberella]

52. I saw nothing inappropriate with the TSA pat down. I see more things wrong with the father.

If her pat-down was so objectionable why didn't make a fuss and call someone. Instead he videotaped the whole thing, to exclaim his horror. Not to mention, I thought the TSA was very gentle with the child and it was clear in the video she spoke to the child as she did everything she was supposed to do. So the child wouldn't be shocked or upset by anything. I don't get it.

I remember when this thing first started...only people of color were picked. I should know since I was randomly picked each and every time I was at the airport and the only people being patted down with me had my complexion. I saw white people looking at us in pity. Now that I see this is done to everyone, I hear horror and shame. No one cried for me as I complained about the process and asked quite publicly and loudly why everyone here had a permanent tan and/or black.

There was nothing wrong here and the only issue is the father. He's a moron.

[Person 2713]

54. +1

[Logical]

58. TSA is not needed, but we knew that anyway. Ny

[underahedgerow]

66. I see a TSA employee doing her job. Nothing in the process was untoward or inappropriate. What I AM

seeing is perhaps a bit of white privilege on the part of the dad.

'My daughter is white, she would never conceal anything on her person'.

Keep in mind they are also screening for contraband trafficking.

Why does this dad think that one set of rules applies to others and not to him or his family. This is routine procedure. If people don't like it, they don't have to fly, they can take a train, a bus or a boat.

[Glassunion]

82. Actually making a fuss is illegal, and call who exactly?

A criminal conviction for interfering with security screening personnel is punishable by up to ten years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

[BadgerKid]

53. Wasn't the whole-body wave scanner in the background available?

Thought those were supposed to the alternative to patting down.

[Ilsa]

57. Not everyone wants that type of radiation,

Especially if they fly frequently; nor do they want strangers looking at pics of their kids with clothing "see-through" imaging.

[mnhtnbb]

55. Both my husband and I get pulled out for the pat down due to our hip replacements all the time

although I've been breezing through more often. He gets pulled out every time.

BUT, every time I've been patted down I've been offered the chance to go in
a private area--behind a screen. I suspect they offered that to this little girl,
too.

What's the dad's problem? If you are going to fly with your kids, they are subject to search
the same as anyone else.

I think the dad videotaping it and putting it out there on the internet is creepy. I don't see anything
wrong with the way the pat down was conducted. Years ago--I mean 1986--a guy planted a bomb
in the carry on of his pregnant wife who was flying El Al out of Heathrow. He was willing to blow up his wife!
Who's to say some one of these crazies wouldn't blow up their kid?


Edited to add: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindawi_affair

I remember the 1986 incident because I was pregnant with our first son at the time, and we had plans to go to Europe. Reagan had just bombed Tripoli,
there were anti-American demonstrations going on everywhere in Europe, and I just got a very bad feeling. We ended up getting off the plane (coming from CA) at JFK--
not going on to Europe--and using the time we would have been in Europe to drive down the east coast and visit Civil War battlefields. It turned out to be one of the best "go with my gut" decisions I've ever made. We later found out that if we had continued
our trip as planned, we would have been in Vienna when Chernobyl blew and I would have gotten a pretty good dose of radiation--at 5 months pregnant.

[Ilsa]

56. They do this to all of us who refuse to be

Placed in the radiation tube where they can see under our clothes.

[betsuni]

60. Last time I flew I got a pat down.

I forgot not to wear an underwire bra and it set off the metal detector, had to go to the Terrorist Corner and wait for a woman agent (this was before the X-rated machines). I told her about the bra. But who believes terrorists? I was wearing tights, a short skirt and a sweater, no pockets or place to hide anything, no jewelry. After fondling me and finding nothing (besides the bra), the agent knew she was dealing with a devious criminal mastermind. Out came the metal detector wand. I had to do invisible Twister positions: legs apart, walk-like-an-Egyptian (repeat on the other side), now on the diagonal, while she spent an embarrassingly long time between my legs (this was in full view of other passengers waiting in line to go through security and they seemed to enjoy the show -- should've gone around with a hat and asked for tips after). I wanted to tell the agent that nothing had been between my legs for months, but luckily stopped myself -- that would be asking for trouble. Finally it was over and she said, "It WAS your underwire bra after all!" Then suddenly I was alone and had to rush around finding my shoes and bags and stuff, like the morning after, then the Walk of Shame to the shuttle bus. I could've sworn people gave me funny looks on the bus because of the Twister Dildo event in the Terrorist Corner, but maybe I was imagining it.

[JEB]

65. I will not fly. This is bullshit.

[MADem]

76. I saw this on TV. I hate to say it, but I think if his little girl was a

complete stranger, with caramel colored skin, wearing hijab, same age, same "too much liquid in a juice box," he'd have NO PROBLEM with it.

Check your kid's shit next time, Pops.

[BlueJazz]

77. That was horrible! She'll be traumatized for ...ah...3 minutes!

[Act_of_Reparation]

79. "The pat-down followed agency guidelines"

Perhaps, maybe, the agency guidelines are fucked up?

Nah, can't be...

[Jake Stern]

80. For those who seem to believe

it's inconceivable that a non-Muslim can be used to commit an act of terror google a man named Hindawi.

He snuck an explosive into his pregnant, White, Irish girlfriend's luggage. His target was an El Al flight.from London.

[steve2470]

86. good find nt

[steve2470]

85. this guy is an idiot

If he really loved his daughter, he would have NEVER done that video and just gotten a lawyer. From what people are saying, I don't think he has a case anyway.

I don't like the airport security stuff, but I'd like someone to design the perfect system that absolutely no one complains about. It's impossible. I've had no problems with the TSA and I've been wanded a few times by the agents. Granted, sometimes the agents have fucked up and crossed the line with some people, which is actionable.