TSA Defends Pat Down Of Baby: Stroller Set Off Explosives Alarm
Agency attempts to play down “Poop Bomb” outrage
Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
May 10, 2011
The TSA has defended the actions of two of it’s agents who were photographed conducting a full body pat down on an eight-month old baby at Kansas City International Airport yesterday, saying they were adhering to procedure.
The image went viral yesterday after it was uploaded to a social networking site with the comment “TSA Looking for Poop Bombs?”
Outrage ensued as the agents were seen laughing and smiling as they checked the baby’s diaper while the child’s mother held him in the air.
Passenger Jacob Jester captured the pat down on his cell phone, and uploaded it to the net with the comment ‘Just saw #tsa agents patting down a little baby at @KCIAirport. Pretty sure that’s extreme.’
Jester, who is also a pastor, commented “I was thinking, what would I do if this happened to my son? I understand that my security is at stake. I appreciate TSA trying to make flying more secure. But I wouldn’t want it to happen to my son.”
The TSA has addressed the incident, once again via it’s official blog, which states:
We reviewed the screening of this family, and found that the child’s stroller alarmed during explosives screening. Our officers followed proper current screening procedures by screening the family after the alarm, who by the way were very cooperative and were on the way to their gate in no time. The child in the photo was simply receiving a modified pat-down which doesn’t even come close to what the headline [“TSA Looking for Poop Bombs?”] implies.
The TSA statement has done little to quell the backlash, with posters on twitter and elsewhere calling the incident “sickening, appalling, oppressive, unlawful, Frightening, disturbing, and disgusting.”
The incident comes in the wake of two other recent cases of young children being groped by the TSA. Last month 8-year-old Spencer Sheahan was subjected to a full pat down at Portland International Airport in Oregon, in addition to 6-year old Anna Drexel, who was groped on video by an agent at New Orleans International airport.
Both children thought they had done something wrong and were being punished. Little Anna broke down in tears afterwards, according to her mother, who said she found it impossible to adequately explain to her daughter why the incident had occurred.
All three of these recent incidents represent a clear violation of TSA’s explicit policy not to conduct thorough pat-downs on children under the age of 13. Yet the TSA, and even Big Sis Janet Napolitano, has defended the actions of its agents in each case.
The TSA official Blog, manned by “Blogger Bob”, has been consistently used by the agency to issue misleading and outright false information in an effort to legitimize the unconstitutional actions of the TSA.
The agency has even suggested in a court of law that it has the right to physically strip air travelers should it wish to do so.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah has introduced legislation to the House that would completely outlaw any form of pat-down on a child by security personnel without the express consent and presence of a parent. Critics have suggested that this isn’t enough, however, and that the TSA should be removed from the nation’s airports all together and replaced with private security screeners.
Watch Alex Jones’ rant on this latest TSA tyranny below:
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Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.
May 10th, 2011 at 9:20 am The stroller sent off the explosives alarm? Well since there were no explosives, that would mean that the machines are not working properly.
They can think up the lousiest excuses! Insane idiots.
May 10th, 2011 at 10:27 am
A BIG MACK WOULD SET IT OFF, CANT YOU MAKE EXPLOSIVES OUT OF SODIUM CHLORIDE …SALT ?
THIS IS LIKE DRUG DOGS TRAINED TO ALERT WHEN THEY REACH THE REAR OF A CAR AND THEY SMELL THE GAS FROM THE GAS CAP!
May 10th, 2011 at 9:44 am You never know, prehaps the kid was thinking about lighting one of it’s farts; then where would you be? Methane gas IS a terrorist’s weapon of mass destruction. That’s a shadey looking baby if ever I saw one. Put him on the list I say.
May 10th, 2011 at 9:52 am Yep, I could have won a bet on Janet’s response. Bitch! Here’s an idea for ya. If the stroller set off the alarm, pat down the stroller. Better yet, pat down the machine that alarmed for not being calibrated correctly. Oh wait, pat down the TSA agents who are too stupid to make sure the machines are working correctly. No, pat down the supervisors who are not training the agents to calibrate the machines. Better yet, pat down the companies that sold these piece of crap machinery. And pat down the people who installed them. And pat down the Federal government for allowing them to be installed. There you go, maybe we should all start groping each other so everyone is safe! The only one who shouldn’t be patted down in this insane mess is that 8 month old baby!!
May 10th, 2011 at 10:11 am
Agreed about the baby. It’s madness. I feel sorry for the kids. I have grandkids, and can’t even help them because their parents are so braindead.
May 10th, 2011 at 11:16 am
I swear, BigPharma, this shit is driving me CRAZY!
May 10th, 2011 at 10:18 am TSA are pussies and here is more proof…what is next, surgically boring into children with probes?those parents should have their kids removed from custody if they can’t protect their children from pedophile thugs at TSA any better than that
May 10th, 2011 at 10:18 am The TSA is stupid….hijack a plane using kung-fu or hand to hand combat, like myself and any veteran knows and as much as they wanna molest children, grab your nutsack, or finger your wifes pussy hole before you board the plane…what will they do when some bad mutherfucker just opens a can of whoop ass and kills everyone one board with his bare hands…….
oh i know, the tsa, while your naked, will make you try to break boards with your bare hands make sure your not a human weapon before boarding the plane
..or option 2 is buy a stinger missile on the black market and blow the plane up from the ground…
May 10th, 2011 at 10:22 am I agree, problem with the MACHINE not the BABY. Stroller with no explosives sets off the alarm. Why, because it was metal, or some other reason? Egads. Take the baby out, run the stroller through again… see if it alarms, check it out.. nothing found. It’s the machine. Are these people brain dead, or just the people who wrote up the protocol in the first place? This is insanity.
May 10th, 2011 at 10:27 am If people boycotted flying it would hurt the airline industry so much that they would have to turn down the tsa searches. I wish people would simply choose not to fly until the change was made.
I do not fly anymore…. mainly because of the tsa. they see us naked thru our clothes and pat down babies, its ridiculous. And this is coming to malls and other areas soon, because we are not boycotting it.
May 10th, 2011 at 12:52 pm
I am with you. Boycott flying. Did so when all this first started. Wish more Americans had the balls to say no. Deny that flying vacation – drive instead. Tell your boss – not gonna fly for work, will rent a car and drive, if you don’t like it andforce the issue, i’ll sue your sorry a**.
All kids that are patted down, parents should then point at the tsa goon and say, “look at him, he is a pervert and you should scream – Stranger Danger!! really loud! Then we are going to press charges and have him/her arrested. Be sure to point though. Very blatantly – finger right at the perv so every one can see and hear.
May 10th, 2011 at 1:08 pm
Agreed. The most powerful way to vote today is to vote with your money.
May 10th, 2011 at 11:11 am The TSA is garbage. This nonsense has to stop!!!!
May 10th, 2011 at 11:18 am Benjamin Franklin certainly had it right when he said “They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
How is it, that we can claim as Americans, that we are land of the free and home of the brave, and we would allow our children to be treated this way. We have become weak and complacent.
Utopia; as much as we’d like to believe exists, does not, nor can it be gained by any promise given by any person or by any government. Wake up people!! Liberties once given up, are hard to regain.
After all the struggles or forefathers have gone through to gain the freedoms we enjoy today, will you relinquish them so foolishly? Question authority when you feel you’ve been wronged. Especially question authority when it comes to those that cannot speak for themselves.
May 10th, 2011 at 1:06 pm
You said it! I lived in Germany for many years and when something was not in favor of the people, lets say their wages not being raised due to rising cost of living or the tram system raised their fare fees people are out on the street to and demonstrate they don’t just sit back and take it. I live in Canada now and can’t believe how complacent the populous is here. I think people had it too good for too long and became that way! ALL MOTHERS should be out on the streets and demand this kind of treatment stopped across the nation. I never heard of such rubbish having babies turned over to check their diapers. How much more perversion are Americans willing to have executed on them???? A call to a general strike Continent wide would bring big Corps to their knees. Can Americans muster that kind of discipline?? I can not believe that any person would give themselves to a job like that in order to violate any persons private SPHERE!! But it shows how numb people have become, too much Disney World holidays,reality TV, and gadget games. Anything to stay disconnected from each other and dumb! Modern life is a humiliation to the HUMAN species.
May 10th, 2011 at 12:45 pm The TSA, MSM, politicians, Neo-Cons, virtually no one ever tells the public what security looks for. ‘EXPLOSIVES ?’ What kind ? Some kind of white powder ? Stuff that looks like baby powder ? What are they looking for ? …. What can it actually blow-up ?
My bet is that if there was a scientific analysis as to how much and what kind of explosive a passenger would need to carry on to a plane in order to produce an effect significant enough to crash a plane, the passenger would need to wear a double extra large Burka that would bulge significantly along the waistline to conceal the necessary amount of explosives needed for accomplishing the task. At any rate, this may be some speculation on my part however I would like to see the question asked and explained, seems no one ever does, it just appears to be a ‘given’ that a small amount of baby powder can blow up a whole entire plane.
May 10th, 2011 at 12:53 pm TSA wouldn’t know a terrorist if one jumped up and bit them in the buttocks!
May 10th, 2011 at 1:37 pm Their whole excuse is rubbage. The TSA doesn’t have walk-thru chemical detectors!!
I’m willing to believe with the pedo’s running the show, that their detectors go off every time they see a prepubescent child — might explain why they seemed to happy to grope the poor kid.
May 10th, 2011 at 1:58 pm If the stroller set off the alarm, why search the kid? This is a lame excuse..
May 10th, 2011 at 2:04 pm What the hell is wrong with these TSA agents? Power hungry, Yes! But to do this to children and babies! These people should be put in a FEMA camp and “questioned” in detail….to the end!