TSA Agents Forced Crying 4 Year-Old To Undergo Pat Down After Hugging Grandma
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/grandma-tsa-agents-forced-crying-4-year-old-to-undergo-tsa-pat-down-at-kan-airport-after-hug/2012/04/25/gIQAojLohT_story.html
- If that child crying keeps thousands safe, I say cry chick cry!!!
- This absolves the TSA entirely. I do not want ANYONE (muslim or christian or young or old) passing through a checkpoint after making contact with an unscreened passenger.
- If you cannot control your 4 year old, then do not bring them into public areas, especially in known problematic situations like the airport. I do not want to be held in line because someone’s 4 year old is freaking out, and I do not want to pay for TSA agents with child psychology degrees.
As if the story itself isn’t sickening enough, reading through some of the comments really drives home why we still entertain these demeaning procedures … because people actually think that they make them “safe.” Because it’s impossible to take a step back and realize that the things TSA agents do are completely against what parents teach their children to look out for – strangers, being separated from adults they know, good touches vs. bad touches.
There’s not a single reason in the world why the acts of the TSA, including and especially this one, couldn’t be improved by a single ounce of compassion for the people who they’re allegedly trying to protect. Why the adult and child couldn’t be inspected together seems to be the most obvious one to me. The fact that a 4 year-old ran back to someone she trusted in a scary place should be a pretty clear and reasonable concept for anyone with half a brain, even if you feel like maybe you need to do a little extra checking because you’ve got some retarded theory that “maybe the Grandma slipped something to the 4 year-old to get it past the checkpoint!”
Just some simple courtesy and understanding could do wonders for half of the negative headlines about the TSA that we see in the papers. Acknowledge that nobody likes the things that you do, and then do everything you can to put your best foot forward to try and lighten that perspective despite the process still being uncomfortable. “Please” … “Thank you” … “How are you today?” … “Have a nice day!” – again, things that we teach our kids, and yet completely oblivious to these appointed authority figures to serve the public.
How long are we going to keep accepting anything less than what we instill upon our children from the people who’ve been selected specifically to protect them???