Go Home Already: Shouts and Murmurs
Man Stops Traffic at 17th and K to Demand $200 Million
Morning Roundup: Goodbye, Abe Edition
Judge Throws Out WTU Suit Over Teacher Layoffs
Vegetate to Close at the End of the Month
>> The young women killed in last night's Beltway accident have been identified, and two of them graduated from high school only hours before. [AP and WTOP]
>> A Judge ruled that rapper 50 Cent cannot be compelled to testify in the civil case against NBA star Allen Iverson stemming from a 2005 scuffle at Eyebar. [WaPo]
>> A woman was humiliated by a TSA employee for trying to take her son's tap water-filled sippy cup through security at National Airport. [Now Public via Consumerist]
>> A man who works for a Takoma Park mortgage company has been arrested after police seized 54 pounds of marijuana from his office and a UPS shipment on his way to be delivered to him. [Metro Networks Communication]
>> A a 16-year-old girl was robbed and sexually assaulted in Gaithersburg. [ABC7]
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The TSA has a page on their "Mythbusters" page about the sippy cup incident - which I would link here, save that it would cause my post to descend into purgatory.
Suffice to say, at the TSA Web site, it's under "Our Approach" then "Mythbusters" (although that seems to be the only myth they have plans to bust).
Re: the "humiliated" woman--check out Now Public's followup post re: TSA's response, including the link to the TSA security video for that area that shows that what happened was nothing like what the lady described. The incident report claims that she tried to claim that as a Secret Service agent "that she should be exempt from all this and this was a stupid policy and this whole thing was [expletive marked out in incident report]", and the video pretty clearly shows her not accidentally spilling the sippy cup and then being humiliated for it, but instead very deliberately pouring it out in the middle of the floor and then trying to turn around and walk back down the exit hall (past the "once you pass this point you CANNOT go back without going through security" signs).
I'm all for bashing on people who abuse their authority, but in this case I think the TSA might be in the right.
I can't believe someone actually wrote an article about this woman. She was obviously upset but the incident was preventable since it was all her fault. I am the last person to defend TSA but this woman obviously felt she had the "right" to be treated differently.
If you see the video she clearly dumps the water on purpose! Then what is worse is the old women who walk through that same area where the woman dumped the water. Note that one of the women looks like she needs help walking. I'm thinking 'Grammy could slip and break a hip.'
DCist, you wrote "A woman was humiliated by a TSA employee for trying to take her son's tap water-filled sippy cup through security at National Airport." You assumed her story was true, even though strong evidence exists to the contrary. All you would've had to say differently was "a woman claimed...." Journalism 101.
Well, I watched the TSA video, and it looks like the airport police, not the TSA, did intentionally humiliate the woman. Yeah, she seemed frazzled trying to get her infant, his baggage-laden stroller, and herself onto the plane, and she does appear to spill the water from the sippy cup on purpose. If you've got a kid, you know that sippy cups typically hold only a few ounces of water and, if the kid had already drank some, there was probably not much to spill.
Now, I'm not arguing that she should have just been permitted to spill the water, but what APPEARS to transpire next does not speak well for the government: The female cop stops her, threatens her with arrest, and demands that Frazzled Woman clean up the water herself. FW crouches down and tries to clean up the water with something from her bag. The female cop radios for backup and puts her left hand on her gun (since she had a likely terrorist here, I guess). FW then pulls the kid from his stroller (probably he started crying) and, well copper looks on, goes back to trying to clean. The kid then runs off and almost gets to the end of the floor before FW catches him. Some guy in a suit shows up and picks up / holds the kid -- so FW can go back to the hard labor to which copper sentenced her. Then a TSA guys comes up and starts handing FW paper towels, and still she's wiping, and still copper looks unsatisfied. The TSA guy actually starts to help her clean, but, perhaps because of a remark from copper, stands up and lets FW finish (but takes her used towels). The whole process takes 10 or so minutes, for most of which Frazzled Woman is seen trying to clean.
How hard can it be clean up a few oz of water? It looks like the cop wasn't going to let FW get back in the security line until every molecule of water was cleaned up, twice.
So, the bigger picture looks to me like the following: FW does something she shouldn't, but nothing that's a big deal, either. Airport police woman on power trip makes it a very big deal, and does in fact abuse FW. FW posts her experience to a listserv and, although she was genuinely abused, glosses over her role in triggering the abuse. Bloggers pick up the story, treating each word as fact. TSA, mis-using the power of the state, posts the video and police report, and contacts Wash Post and other papers "on background" to discredit the woman, glossing over the police's misconduct. It works.
Oblivious Dude-
So you think its not a "big deal" to intentionally pour several ounces of water onto the floor of an airport in front of a security guard, but its an abusive misuse of "the power of the state" to make the lady clean up her own mess? Give me a break!
And like Mari said, would it become a big deal if one of those old ladies walking by in the video slipped in the water, fell, and broke her hip?
The TSA guy could have gotten out the paper towels right away, and the few ounces of water could have been cleaned, by FW or TSA, in a few seconds. There was no reason for the cop to put her hand on her gun, call for backup, and force FW to spend 10 minutes "cleaning up" the water. The cop(s) behaved unprofessionally, to put it charitably. They are professionals given great power, and are charged with keeping their emotions in check even when others, including frazzled passengers, can't keep their emotions in check.
I'd hazard to guess that kids -- and adults, for that matter -- spill gallons of liquids each day in busy terminals, and I'm not aware of an epidemic of broken hips. Again, my position is FW was in the wrong to spill the water, but the cops then went on an abusive power trip. I said they were both wrong, and the government has used its power to suggest, via innuendo, that only she was wrong.
Your position, DGB, boils down to "two wrongs make a right."
My position, Oblivious, is that if you intentionally pour water onto the floor of an airport, you shouldn't whine about being a victim for having to clean it up.
TSA reacted the way it did to her spilling/dropping the water due to the way the woman handled herself at the security checkpoint. In other words, she drew attention to herself and they had every right to be concerned about her subsequent actions. It was not "abusive" because TSA already had one run-in with the woman and they were concerned she was trying to sneak back in without going through the checkpoint again.
Huh? That's why they needed to make her spend 10 minutes "cleaning" a sippy cup full of water? The problem is not with stopping her or questioning her, it's with sentencing her to 10 minutes of labor on her knees in a public place because -- maybe -- she talked back to a cop with a chip on her shoulder. Two wrongs don't make a right, ESPECIALLY where someone wielding the power of the state is involved.
What really bothers me is that TSA brass authorized release of that tape and hearsay "incident report" (by a supervisor presumably not at the scene for the whole event)on a section of its website entitled "Mythbusters." A US citizen under stress acted up, and then the police acted up in response. Instead of saying something like "the woman acted inappropriately, and the police response is under review," some Bush appointee or blinkered bureaucrat uses our tax dollars to "bust" a "myth" that is not very mythical.
There's probably no other sphere in American life where law-abiding citizens regularly face such invasive treatment by the state as airport security checkpoints. Invasiveness may be necessary to protect us from terrorists, but it predictably bothers many travelers. We -- law-abiding citizens -- have every right to expect the supposed professionals in TSA and airport police departments to keep their cool and not dish out public humiliation to "punish" citizens that lose theirs. The cops and TSA leaders in this situation acted like spoiled brats.
The Bitch Lied.
She intentionally poured the water out (why didn't she just gulp it down? Gimme a break)
She DESERVED to wipe it up herself - I have cleaned up spills that I created in public.
Then she went home to the online community and blatantly LIED THRU HER TEETH that she "accidentally" spilled the water.
So don't believe the bitch.
i'm with Oblivious Dude. yeah, the lady was probably pretty dumb to drop the water intentionally (as it appears on the TSA video) - but the bike cop, the lady cop, and various TSA officers? totally unnecessary and just another example of how over-the-top people who have power can be... and they're supposed to be "professional", how it is okay for them to react in the way the woman did?