"When a Pat-Down Seems Like Groping"

Tuesday, November 2, 2004

When a Pat-Down Seems Like Groping
By JOE SHARKEY
The New York (NY) Times
 
 
Rhonda L. Gaynier, a New York lawyer, is hopping mad because, she says,
getting on an airplane these days means being groped by a stranger.
According to her and others, groping of airline passengers has increased
since the Transportation Security Administration issued new guidelines
recently requiring checkpoint screeners to conduct more frequent, and more
intimate, pat-downs.

Reactions have been strong, especially from women. 

"Listen, I don't particularly like it when my doctor gives me a breast exam,
O.K.?" said Ms. Gaynier, who is 46. "And now I'm supposed to accept a breast
exam, in public, at the airport? Next time I'll drive rather than flying."

The new T.S.A. policy went into effect Sept. 22. The policy states, in part,
"Additional screening, including pat-down searches, may be required of
passengers based on visual observations by screeners, even if the audible
alarm has not gone off." Another provision states, "T.S.A. policy is that
screeners are to use the back of the hand when screening sensitive body
areas, which include the breasts (females only), genitals and buttocks." Ms.
Gaynier, one of dozens of female passengers nationally who have been taking
their objections about the new policy to the news media, said that she had
not been selected for a secondary screening for years, until Oct. 19. Then,
at Tampa International Airport while en route home to New York on a standard
round-trip ticket purchased on American Airlines, she was directed to stand
aside - rudely, she said - for a random secondary screening. Next, "I had to
step over to an area where they have a mat on the floor with footprints on
it,'' she said. "The screener does more of the wand thing, but then she
starts patting me down. She puts a hand under my armpit and then up over my
shoulder."

"What are you doing?" Ms. Gaynier asked.

"Well, ma'am, this is our new screening procedure," came the reply.

"Since when? You did the wand thing, you went through my bag and didn't find
anything. Why are you touching me like this?"

She said this got the attention of a supervisor, who told her: "You have to
do the screening or you can't get on your flight."

Ms. Gaynier dug in and argued.

"You're treating me like a common criminal,'' she recalls telling the
supervisor. "You have no probable cause to be searching me like this. This
is how a criminal gets treated." She says she then handed him her business
card.

As a lawyer, Ms. Gaynier specializes in real estate and landlord-tenant
litigation, not criminal law. "But I thought, well, I'll throw these legal
terms out and see if I can back him down," she said.

She could not. According to Ms. Gaynier, the supervisor said, "Well, ma'am,
since you're some legal eagle, did you know that you consented to this
screening procedure when you purchased your ticket? And that if you don't
consent to the screening, you don't get on your plane?"

She relented. "I said, 'I just want to go home. Do your stupid pat-down and
let me out of here.' "

But then, she said, she got the pat-down deluxe. "The agent comes over and
starts on my left side. Under my arm, over my shoulder, down the side of my
body to my waist, around my waistline, and then she comes up to my bra strap
in the back and goes across to my right side, under the armpit, over the
shoulders, and then she comes around front and touches me right between my
breasts, and then follows the edge of my bra cups around both breasts. 

"I was like, 'Whoa! What are you doing?' and I backed up. The supervisor was
right there and he says, 'You're not allowing the screening to happen.' And
I said, 'You're kidding me. You can't be touching me between my breasts.' "

The supervisor summoned the police. Four officers promptly arrived on the
scene. "Real cops - guns, clubs, the whole nine yards, all for me, this big
security threat," Ms. Gaynier said.

She does concede, "I pitched quite a fit" at the intervention. To make a
long story short, she did not make her flight. The police escorted her from
the gate area. 

She said she managed to find another flight home, on JetBlue, where she
submitted unhappily but without overt objection to another public "breast
exam."

The T.S.A. says that physical pat-downs are necessary to guard against the
sort of nonmetallic explosives that checkpoint metal detectors do not pick
up, and that screeners make every effort to protect passengers' privacy.
Also, at several airports the T.S.A. is testing new detector technology that
does not require a physical pat-down to test for explosives. 

But for the immediate future, the pat-down is evidently a fact of life for
anyone chosen by screeners for a secondary inspection.

Screeners are not thrilled with the new rules, either, said Mark Arsenault,
a former law enforcement professional who publishes TSA-Screeners.com, an
unofficial Web site for screeners to share news and complaints. A recent
article on the site was headlined "Don't Touch My Breasts!"

"Most of the screeners who have commented to me about the subject seem to
empathize with the travelers who complain, but at the same time know that
the searches must be done for security reasons - not to mention the fact
that failing to conduct such a search could be grounds for termination under
T.S.A. rules," said Mr. Arsenault, a graphic designer whose wife is a
screener in Sacramento.


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