Child with Cerebral Palsy as a TSA threat?

[ColonusFan]

I have been on a plane only once post SCI and due to the Harrington rods and hooks along my spine I lit up the metal detector and won a trip to the pat down zone. When I read this story I wondered "How Far does the TSA go to approach RIDICULOUSNESS"?

Has any one else been given the N th - degree by TSA?

Photo of Dina Frank. (Photo by CBS 2)


WASHINGTON (CBSDC) – The Transportation Security Administration is once again the subject of national scrutiny, this time after aggressively screening a 7-year-old female passenger with cerebral palsy which caused her family to miss their flight. The girl, identified as Dina Frank in a report by The Daily, was waiting with her family on Monday to board a flight departing from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York headed to Florida. Since Dina walks with the aid of leg braces and crutches, she cannot pass through airport metal detectors, and must instead submit to a pat-down by TSA agents. Dina, who is also reportedly developmentally disabled, is usually frightened by the procedure. Her family reportedly requests that agents on hand take the time to introduce themselves to her. However, the agents on duty at the time began to handle her aggressively instead. Air travel is difficult to the family due to Dina’s disabilities, but the nature of Monday’s inspection was especially traumatic for the child. “They make our lives completely difficult,” her father, Dr. Joshua Frank, a Long Island pediatrician, told The Daily. “She’s not a threat to national security.” Frank taped the encounter, which ended when a supervisor inspected her crutches and let them pass. But agents followed up and insisted upon doing a full inspection of Dina. Ultimately, the family missed their flight. “They’re harassing people. This is totally misguided policy,” Frank told The Daily. “Yes, I understand that TSA is in charge of national security and there’s all these threats. [But] for her to be singled out, it’s crazy.” Dina, from Long Island, had recently experienced triumph after Botox and phenol injections helped her to gain control of her legs, enough to take several unassisted steps. After being born prematurely and suffering from bleeding in the brain, Dina struggled for years to get around, even enduring a double hip replacement to assist in her recovery, CBS New York reported.

Source:

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/...erebral-palsy/

[wheeliecoach]

We are always searched when we fly...some more aggressively than others...I really do not have an issue with it. I rather they check us thoroughly. There are a lot of places to hide things when you have a chair. I know they do not want to be so intrusive.

[Jar27]

If t s a touch me, I bite them.

[darkeyed_daisy]

I always set the detectors off too. They give me a wooden cane to walk through with.

I have had a few really aggressive pat downs and they swab the braces every time.

They x-rayed my feet in Atlanta the last time I flew through Hartsfield. I do not like that part of it.

So I can only imagine what it was like for this child.