Reprehensible: TSA Is An Abomination

The humiliations and the abominations at the hands of the TSA just keep on coming.

From MSNBC.com Travel News:

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.

(Thomas D.) Sawyer, 61, 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.”

I can relate to this man. Before he passed away last year, my father had two surgeries for colon cancer which left him with colostomies on two separate occasions. He was lucky enough to be eligible for two subsequent resections. In the meantime, he had to learn how to install his own bags, empty his bags, and deal with life. I also had to learn how to purchase the very specific bags he needed, the very specific seals/wafers he needed, and thence to install them over his stoma.

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.”

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.”

Completely wrong. Yes, they did need to know about that. And it just gets worse.

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.”

Come on, people. Please, just come on. Can't anyone have a molecule of common sense here? Can't anyone see the clear and plain results of their actions? Can't anyone foresee the obvious results of their physical actions?

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.”

Humiliated, upset and wet, Sawyer said he had to walk through the airport soaked in urine, board his plane and wait until after takeoff before he could clean up.

So, in order to make his flight in a timely fashion, Mr Sawyer had to forego stopping in an airport bathroom and managed to clean himself up only after boarding the plane he had to catch? He had to run down the terminals with piss-soaked pants in public?

Let me pause a moment to collect my thoughts, because I wish not to be misinterpreted.

To TSA and allied personnel and agencies:

You should be very glad that my father, during his times of duress and challenge, wasn't forced to fly. Had I accompanied him or, later, had I learned of his being treated in a fashion similar to Mr Sawyer, there would have been some very serious problems.

Had these actions occurred in front of me -- had my father been treated like that -- searched and then forced to have his seal broken and his body resultingly soaked in not just piss but shit . . .

. . . I would be writing to you now from a federal prison.

Because, on the other hand, the individual who had treated my father in a way similar to Mr Sawyer would himself be shitting out of a bag, or attempting to learn his alphabet all over again after the brain swelling subsided following the encounter.

Those of my readers who know me personally -- or those readers who have been accompanying me on this blog journey for a number of years -- realize that I am not kidding. Not about my father.

My father is dead now. This will never happen. I can only thank God for that.

Ladies and gentlemen, you simply cannot treat human beings like this.

You simply cannot.

BZ