Mom, the #TSA did bad things to me

While the IRS is getting a lot of bad publicity these days in light of their overt abuses of power and tyrannical behavior, another government agency just as loathed among many Americans is the blue-shirted TSA.

Officially known as the Transportation Safety Administration, this intrusive, abusive and infuriating agency, which, to date, has not caught one terrorist, is better at angering Americans more than protecting them.

According to a 2012 report in Human Events, the TSA costs the American economy billions in lost business, both here and abroad. Foreigners don’t like coming here because they find American airports unfriendly and, The Wall Street Journal, in 2011, called the last decade “America’s Lost Decade of Tourism,” no thanks to the bullying thugs at the TSA. Think about this: the US Travel Association reports that two-out-of-five travelers are boycotting airports in favor of trains, cars and other forms of transportation. These people refuse to endure the indignity of being groped, manhandled, felt-up, robbed or even raped, as we have seen in recent years.

And if you think the TSA is going to remain solely at America’s airports, think again. They are covertly setting their sights on our highways and railways as well. And Congress? They look the other way as they award TSA more and more money, currently costing taxpayers $1.2 billion annually.

We say all this to remind (and who really needs reminding?) that the TSA is not cleaning up their act, despite all the happy talk and promises to “do better.” They don’t do better. The same class of sociopathic imbeciles who can barely fit into their polyester uniforms are still on the same power trips that they were on when the devilish TSA was first created.

Bringing things closer to home, Red Dirt Report (which has had a number of bizarre encounters with these “agents” of Uncle Sam) recently spoke to a whistleblower who used to work at Will Rogers World Airport here in Oklahoma City.

This former airport insider, who we will identify as “Stacy,” told Red Dirt Report that for the time they worked at the airport, they “had a real hate-hate relationship with TSA.”

• I would watch them search people. The way they treated people. I found it very offensive,” Stacy said.

Stacy relayed a shocking incident that occurred approximately during the Thanksgiving 2012 holiday travel period.

“A woman in her late 30’s or early 40’s approached me and asked if I could help her,” Stacy recalls. “She told me that ‘those people in the blue uniforms took my daughter in that back room and she’s been gone for a long time.’”

Stacy confirmed to the worried mother that that “room” was where “special handling” and “interrogations” and “strip searches” take place.

Stacy said the mother was getting frantic. They were going to miss their flight. She said they were traveling out of state from southeastern Oklahoma and that her daughter was in a beauty pageant.

“I’d say she was about 14, maybe even 16,” Stacy said. “She eventually came out of the interrogation room and was shaking and appeared as if she had been crying. She was very attractive and looked young. She came up to her mother and said, ‘Mom, they did bad things to me.’ The mother, shocked, held her hand over her mouth and said, ‘Oh, my God!’”

Asked what the mother and daughter did next, Stacy, aware that a crime had taken place in the name of “security,” said that she was not supposed to really even be in that area of the airport at that time and so simply told them to file a complaint with TSA. There was nothing more Stacy could do.

The mother, Stacy noted, was clearly in a state of shock over what had taken place with her daughter.

Does Stacy know if the mother and daughter ever filed a report or followed up?

“She’s like a lot of people who say it won’t do any good. That’s why this stuff still goes on. The mother was afraid of the TSA and in shock. Some people are more aggressive and file reports and get in their face. Some are passive. Some think that if I mess with these people, I’ll end up in jail.”

Asked by Red Dirt Report if Stacy knew who the alleged child molesters were, Stacy indicated that they could be positively identified. Those names were shared with Red Dirt Report and have been noted.

Stacy’s insider view gave the former airport employee a chance to see what really goes on. The “playing of favorites.” The infighting. The aggressive and rude behavior towards travelers. The fact that the local police hate the TSA.

“I filed plenty of complaints against the TSA for things they did,” Stacy said. “They would yell at children. They would tell parents in front of their children that they were bad parents. They would harass people who were afraid of the (security) dogs. They would yell and belittle them.”

Children are routinely traumatized after an encounter with a TSA agent. Stacy said that children will often say they don’t want to go on that trip to Disney World because they are now scared of the “bad man” in blue.

Stacy recounted the case of a notorious “behavior-detection officer” whom we will call “Jerry.”

“Oh boy. Behavioral detection officers are the worst,” said Stacy. “They take a week-long training course and practice session and then they think that qualifies them to detect anomalies in people’s behavior.”

Curiously, this “behavior” includes: people who blend in (they are flagged); people who cheerfully say they support the TSA’s efforts (they are flagged); and people who say they hate the TSA (they are definitely flagged).

Repeatedly calling Jerry a “really bad person” and “very unfriendly,” Stacy said that Jerry’s treatment of airport patrons was not that much different from the way a prison guard treats prisoners.

“(Jerry) would belittle people and say, ‘Didn’t you learn nothin’ in grade school?’ He’d put fingers in people’s face …” noted Stacy. And if you were on Jerry’s bad list he’d follow you around with a pen and notepad “taking notes.”

“It was just psychological warfare,” Stacy said.

All the while, Jerry would be walking around and chewing and spitting tobacco in trash cans around the airport. Stacy called Jerry out on this and he would just get angry.

One woman, who was from the Middle East, was going through security and indicated she was scared of the dogs, an animal viewed differently in that part of the world. Jerry marched up to the poor woman, stuck his finger in her face and said she would allow the dog to sniff her or she could just march right back out of the airport.

Another TSA agent, whom we will call Gloria, used to harass Stacy and other folks working for the same agency Stacy worked for. When Stacy would ask Gloria why she could get away with what she was doing (or not doing, as the case may be), Gloria would cryptically respond, “That’s classified.”

Stacy also said that the invasive, even sexual assaults that men, women and children often endure are simply seen as a necessary way to keep America safe.

Talking to a creepy TSA agent whom we will call Charlie, he told Stacy that “It’s okay to search children sexually because they’re potential terrorists” and that he got into this racket to “fight the terrorists.”

Stacy was appalled by these admissions, particularly when most children are told not to allow adults to touch them inappropriately.

Stacy added that Charlie fancied himself as “a ladies man” and would regularly flirt with airline ticket agents while on the clock.

Alarmingly, Stacy was told in confidence by a police officer that the TSA is currently trying to deputize Oklahoma City Police Department officers to be under their control, so that when TSA -which does not have arrest powers-  tells them to arrest someone they will have a “legal obligation to arrest someone.”*

At one point, Stacy was informed by a TSA representative that the lower-level TSA employees hated upper-echelon TSA folks like Charlie, Jerry and Gloria.

This same deranged TSA agent also told Stacy that he felt women who had had an abortion deserved to be executed.

There were a lot of accusations of racism, Stacy noted. African-American TSA agents complained about the way they were treated but would generally back down out of fear of losing their job.

While they might be aggressive in a “pack,” Stacy said they are really cowards when addressed one-on-one.

“It’s as if they never grew up emotionally,” Stacy said. “They are nothing more than thugs and bullies in the way they deal with people.”

Stacy’s observations have been shared with others and those people also can’t believe the outrageous stories they are told involving the TSA.

“I can’t begin to express the level of immaturity I witnessed while working there,” Stacy said. “It was like back in high school, that level of immaturity. They are given too much power and they destroy people’s lives.”

UPDATE*: (5:15 p.m. May 16, 2013) We heard back from Sgt. Jennifer Wardlow at the Oklahoma City Police Department this afternoon and she said that after researching it, there are no plans for the OCPD to coordinate with TSA in such a manner.

And as for a representative for the TSA, we contacted regional media relations coordinator Luis Casanova, but had not heard back from him by the time this story was published. If we do hear back, we will be certain to post his response.