The mother who took the video complained that her family was”treated like dogs” and forced to miss a flight during an extensive security check, according to her Facebook 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.
The Transportation Security Administration apologized and said that it regretted the incident. Just kidding! As usual, the TSA claimed that everything went according to procedure, despite the smoking gun evidence of a child being bullied, intimidated and molested. (And kudos to the young man for keeping his cool.) The agency’s prepared statement said that the agent followed approved procedures to “resolve an alarm of the passenger’s laptop.” Did it look to you like the agent was patting down a laptop? The TSA disputed the mother’s account, claiming that the passengers were at the checkpoint for “only” 45 minutes, including the time it took to discuss screening procedures with the teen’s mother and the inspection of three carry-on items. The pat-down took about two minutes, it said.
Ridiculous. Forty five minutes or an hour, that’s still too long, and would cause most passengers to miss their flights. It would certainly make me miss about 90% of them. As for the patdown above, it doesn’t matter how long it took: look at it. It’s res ipsa loquitur: invasive, abusive, unreasonable, cruel, and unforgivable.
Fire him.
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Pointer: HLN
Facts: Dallas News