Roy Exum
The government’s official Transportation Security Administration website, “Blogger Bob”, was busier than a line cook at the Waffle House over the weekend. Bob Burns handles the TSA Blog, where American citizens can make remarks on the news of the day. And when a lawsuit was filed by a Chattanooga patient on Friday who was brutalized last year at a security checkpoint at the Memphis International Airport, it immediately became one of the worst nightmare in TSA history.
“Blogger Bob” was quick to say, “TSA officers at airport checkpoints do not have the authority to arrest any passenger, regardless of the situation,” and also informed an enraged public, “TSA officers do not carry firearms, billy clubs, mace, stun guns or any other type of weapon. Nor do TSA officers carry handcuffs. They are not authorized to use force in the performance of their duties.”
Of course, he is posturing because there is no doubt TSA officials sicc’ed what is apparently an airport goon squad on Chattanooga’s Hannah Cohen on June 30, 2015. Hannah and her mom were joyously returning from St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis where she has been treated for 17 years with a brain tumor. Relentless treatment has left her blind and deaf on the left side of her face and she doesn’t have the motor skills to walk, stand or function like a normal teenager.
When a scanner was triggered by what is believed to be the sequins on her shirt – the image of an owl – the TSA geniuses ignored her mother’s harried explanations and summoned the Memphis International Airport Police Department brawlers. A picture of Hannah’s bloodied face has now gone viral all over the world as she is handcuffed and being held down. While Memphis Airport CEO Scott Brockman since said the attack on the girl is only “alleged,” there seems to be clear proof the Americans with Disabilities Act was badly over-stepped by the airport police.
“Blogger Bob,” obviously trying to throw the Memphis Airport Police under the bus in an effort in try to get the TSA off the hook, wants to show his comrades as toothless, but the TSA agents are who screamed for the airport police to thwart what must have sounded like a terrorist attack by the teen-aged and infirm Cohen, who had been given general anesthesia just the day before.
The Memphis International Airport PD is a curious lot. They are not in any way connected to the Memphis Police Department or the Shelby County’s Sheriff’s Department so as accountability rears its head, it is grievous Hannah was taken to a hospital for wounds she incurred and then incarcerated overnight at the Memphis East Women’s Jail. It was over 24 hours before she was allowed to see her mother.
Two days later, when she made an appearance before a Memphis judge, it has been reported the judge’s eyes grew big as saucers at such an obvious travesty. He promptly dismissed every charge and even refunded the Cohens’ $250 court fee.
The cost of sound judgment at Memphis International comes high. Every executive at the Memphis International Airport (all 18) makes in excess of $100,000 a year, this led by CEO Brockman’s $312,000 salary. Thomas Wallace, the director of public safety at the airport, is paid $153,092, while Jerry Brandon, who is the police chief under Wallace, is paid $108,837. By comparison, A.C. Wharton, who is the mayor of Memphis, has an annual salary of $162,925 and Memphis Police Chief Toney Armstrong makes $120,180.
It is hoped the overwhelming publicity and the raging public outcry will bring a strong focus on the Memphis airport’s den of snakes but it is unlikely; in a new study by the website 24/7WallStreet, Memphis paced No. 8 in the 50 Worst Cities in America with a poverty rate of almost 30 percent. Things are so bad that tourists are now charged $10 to walk down jazz-crazy Beale Street but not because of what you may think – the charge is to keep the local riff-raff out!
By Tuesday morning there were 30 pages of indignation and insults on the TSA Blog but by 2 p.m yesterday, each had obviously expired or embarrassingly albeit wisely pulled. Here are some:
* -- If this had happened to Ahmed the clock boy, he’d be invited by President Obama to sleep over at The White House for a year. I know this is too much to ask but is there any watchdog group that could hound the TSA until all those involved are fired.
* -- Through TSA screening, failure rates of up to 95 percent in finding replica bombs and weapons carried by undercover agents, but which has been shorn of disabled teenage girls.
* -- All the niceties are good, but someone in this incidence needs a good (expletive) whipping.
* -- An (expletive) whipping every day for a month of Sundays.
* -- “Anybody can file anything” …. Yeah, and all that blood on her face is really her make-up.
* -- You darn right! I know good and well I wouldn’t last long and I would be injured or dead, I would not care. I would not stand for (Hannah’s treatment) to happen in front of me.
* -- The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing (quote by Edmund Burke.) What would you do if someone did this to your family in any other context? Why would this context be any different.
* -- (The Memphis police and TSA) want to be militaristic? OK – let them face a firing squad.
* -- We will never fly again but I can see the day when these illiterate thugs will be allowed to check passengers at bus stations, train stations, and then vehicles in rest areas on the highways. All in the interest of public safety, of course.
* * *
And the biggest question of the day: Where oh where is the Department of Justice? Had Hannah Cohen been black, and airport police officials Wallace and Brandon white, what might have happened in the eighth worst city in America?
royexum@aol.com