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Title: TSA Forces Woman To Remove Nipple Rings For Flight
Source:
http://cbs5.com
URL Source: http://cbs5.com/local/nipple.rings.flight.2.686288.html
Published: Mar 27, 2008
Author: CBS/AP
Post Date: 2008-03-27 22:51:45 by robin
Keywords: None
Views: 198
Comments: 12
LOS ANGELES (CBS 5 / AP) 53; A Texas woman who claims she was forced to remove a nipple ring with pliers in order to board an airplane called Thursday for an apology by federal security agents and a civil rights investigation. "I wouldn't wish this experience upon anyone," Mandi Hamlin, 37, said at a news conference in Los Angeles. "My experience with TSA was a nightmare I had to endure. No one deserves to be treated this way." Hamlin said she was trying to board a flight from Lubbock to Dallas on Feb. 24 when she was scanned by a Transportation Security Administration agent after passing through a larger metal detector without problems. The female TSA agent used a handheld detector that beeped when it passed in front of Hamlin's chest, the Dallas-area resident said. Hamlin said she told the woman that she was wearing nipple piercings. The female agent then called over her male colleagues, one of whom said she would have to remove the body piercings, Hamlin claimed. Hamlin said she could not remove them and asked if she could instead display her pierced breasts in private to the female agent. But several other male officers told her she could not board her flight until the jewelry was removed, she said. She was taken behind a curtain and managed to remove one bar-shaped nipple piercing but had trouble with the second, a ring. "Still crying, she informed the TSA officer that she could not remove it without the help of pliers, and the officer gave a pair to her," said Hamlin's attorney, Gloria Allred, reading from a letter she sent Thursday to the director of the TSA's Office of Civil Rights and Liberties. Allred is a well-known Los Angeles lawyer who often represents high-profile claims. Hamlin showed reporters at the news conference how she took off the second ring by applying pliers to the torso of a mannequin that had a peach-colored bra with the rings on it. She said she heard male TSA agents snickering as she took out the ring. She was scanned again and was allowed to board even though she still was wearing a belly button ring. "After nipple rings are inserted, the skin can often heal around the piercing, and the rings can be extremely difficult and painful to remove," Allred said. TSA officials said they were investigating Hamlin's allegations to see if its policies were followed. "Our security officers are well-trained to screen individuals with body piercings in sensitive areas with dignity and respect while ensuring a high level of security," the agency said in a statement. On its Web site, the TSA warns that passengers "may be additionally screened because of hidden items such as body piercings, which alarmed the metal detector." "If you are selected for additional screening, you may ask to remove your body piercing in private as an alternative to a pat-down search," the site reads. Hamlin would have accepted a "pat-down" had it been offered, Allred said. If an alarm does sound, "until that is resolved, we're not going to let them go through the checkpoint, no matter what they're wearing or where they're wearing it," said TSA spokesman Dwayne Baird in Salt Lake City. People routinely pass through security wearing wedding rings without problems and it might take a larger bit of metal to trigger an alarm, Baird said. "I'd be really curious to know what this woman had in her nipples," he said. "Sometimes they have a chain between their nipples, or a chain between their nipples and their belly button. It would have to be made of heavy metal to be detected." Transportation Security employees are required to check anything that raises concerns at checkpoints, Baird said. "No matter what it is, if it's something that unduly alarms people or sets off the sensors they must check it," Baird said. "But I've never heard of any of our people having anyone remove something that sounds as small as a nipple ring." Allred said celebrity Nicole Richie had her breasts inspected by security at an airport because of her nipple rings several years ago. Baird said he was not aware of the Richie incident either. Hamlin filed a complaint but the TSA's customer service manager at the Lubbock airport concluded the screening was handled properly, Allred said. Hamlin wants an apology from the TSA and an investigation by the agency's civil rights office. Allred said she might consider legal action if the TSA does not apologize. Hamlin was publicly humiliated and has "undergone an enormous amount of physical pain to have the nipple rings reinserted" because of scar tissue," Allred said. Hamlin said her piercings have never set off an airport metal detector. She added that she will never fly out of Lubbock again. "The conduct of TSA was cruel and unnecessary," Allred said. "The last time that I checked a nipple was not a dangerous weapon."
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#1. To: robin (#0)
Articles like these make me glad I'm in Ecuador. Domestic flights here have minimal intrusiveness. No wands. Just a metal detector you walk through and your carry-on's go through a conveyor xray. Liquids are no problem and it might even be permitted to bring knives on board.
Pinguinite.com EcuadorTreasures.ec
Compassionate conservatism in action.... How much more abuse until we have a right to exercise the 2nd Amendment option??
"If the Union was formed by the accession of States, then the Union may be dissolved by the secession of States." ---Daniel Webster, US Senate, Feb. 15, 1833
"Well it looked like a firing pin to us."
The truth is that responsible Southerners have deliberately weakened their own defense because of their unwillingness to raise the underlying problem. They talk of states’ rights when they should be talking anthropology, and they do so out of instinctive human kindness. There is a point at which kindness imposed upon ceases to be a virtue.
"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men." -- Samuel Adams (1722-1803)‡
If there is in fact such a thing as "Al-Qaeda", they must be laughing their asses off at the stupidity Americans are subjected to in order to feel "safe"... But since most of us are aware that it's more "Al-CIAduh" than "Al-Qaeda", we know who's really doing the laughing.
hehehehe ouch on those nipple piercings. that gives me the willies.
Only fools fly. And fools deserve their mistreatment.
I always thought the water would be a decent escape route, but Lt. Eric Shine explained this past weekend at a 9/11 conference, that the Coast Guard is now fully armed. He considers the Coast Guard a greater threat to Americans than Blackwater. I posted a thread on him here. 'Individuals should not take responsibility for their own defense. That’s what the police are for. ... If I oppose individuals defending themselves, I have to support police defending them. I have to support a police state.”' Alan Dershowitz
Only fools create a climate that intimidates the public at large from flying a commercial airline. And when this situation is rectified, they deserve all the mistreatment coming to them. It is our duty as the public to not allow this sort of petty tyranny to be conducted by blue collar passenger screening personnel. Any idiot knows a woman with a nip ring is not a TOW missile, she is not even a 22 caliber short rim fire bullet, so the exercises here was in petty harassment, one the public has been traditionally good at destroying. If they did this to my girl friend, I would make it my job to be their worst nightmare in every degree I could manage, this is insufferable and inexcusable use of job related prerogative to humiliate and harass someone with no cause but to advance their own prurient sense of what is amusing to to to others or not. It is time to destroy the neocons, neocon thinking and neocon related unworkable concepts such as low paid, undereducated, and vindictive screening personnel running the airport screening gig. Either they do it right, or go back to the way we used to do it which on the balance of things makes good sense. They are screwing up trying to do the impossible with flawed and vindictive tools and should come up with a solution or end this charade going on across this nation concerning passenger screening.
I wonder what the psychological profile of the average TSA agent is? Rather than balk at flying maybe we should fly more often. Eventually one of these goons will create a nice lawsuit. William Rodriguez, one of the heroes of 9/11 told a group over the weekend that he is on the No Fly list.
'Individuals should not take responsibility for their own defense. That’s what the police are for. ... If I oppose individuals defending themselves, I have to support police defending them. I have to support a police state.”' Alan Dershowitz
We live in a dictatorship so there is nothing we can do about the Coast Guard but people can avoid flying. If the publc stopped flying, the government could spend their $billions having the thugs twiddle their thumbs in the empty airports.
They are just thugs employed by our dictators to demonstrate to the public who is in charge. There will be no lawsuit. You can not sue the dictators.
#2. To: robin (#0)
#3. To: robin (#0)
#4. To: robin (#0)
#5. To: robin (#0)
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#6. To: robin (#0)
"The last time that I checked a nipple was not a dangerous weapon."
#7. To: robin (#0)
#8. To: DWornock (#7)
#9. To: DWornock, robin (#7)
(Edited)
"Only fools fly. And fools deserve their mistreatment."
Diplomacy is the art of saying nice doggy, till you find a large rock.
#10. To: Ferret Mike, DWornock (#9)
#11. To: robin (#8)
I always thought the water would be a decent escape route, but Lt. Eric Shine explained this past weekend at a 9/11 conference, that the Coast Guard is now fully armed. He considers the Coast Guard a greater threat to Americans than Blackwater.
#12. To: robin (#10)
I wonder what the psychological profile of the average TSA agent is? Rather than balk at flying maybe we should fly more often. Eventually one of these goons will create a nice lawsuit. William Rodriguez, one of the heroes of 9/11 told a group over the weekend that he is on the No Fly list.
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