TSA Chief Apologizes To Bladder Cancer Survivor After Excruciating Experience In Detroit

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by Mark Joyella | 3:35 pm, November 22nd, 2010

» 7 comments

The story retired teacher Thomas Sawyer tells of his experience at the hands of a TSA officer at Detroit’s airport makes you want to scream at the TSA agent and give Mr. Sawyer a hug–and now TSA Chief John Pistole has called to apologize.

Sawyer, a cancer survivor, lost his bladder and has a urostomy bag attached to his body under his clothing. When a body scanner picked up the bag at a security checkpoint, Sawyer was pulled aside for an enhanced pat down. As Sawyer recounted the story Monday on CNN’s American Morning, what happened next was avoidable–and humiliating:

“He started to talk about the pat down procedure and I said I need to tell you about my medical condition. He said, no you don’t need to tell me, and I said no, really, I have to…He proceeded just with the pat down. When he got to my chest area, he used his open palm and started going down my chest quite hard. And I knew if he got down near where my urostomy bag was, there was a possibility of pulling the seal off of it.”

Mr. Sawyer warned the TSA agent to go slow and soft at risk of tearing away the tube connected to Mr. Sawyer’s stomach, but that didn’t happen. “Once that happened, it was kind of like pulling the seal off a container of orange juice and turning it upside down,” said Sawyer, who says “one of the biggest fears of ostomy patients is having a leak in public.”

“These people need to be trained in physical conditions–and emotional conditions.”

Your heart really goes out to the guy, and then there’s this: The TSA agent, Sawyer says, never apologized–leaving the gentle retiree to clean himself up in an airport bathroom before traveling on to Orlando.

Sawyer has now received an apology–from the man in charge, who called on Monday afternoon to express his regrets.

Watch the interview, from CNN:

American Morning, bladder cancer, CNN, ostomy bag, thomas sawyer, TSA

berserk

I started out not too sympathetic with the Opt Out movement because I thought this was counter productive. But after hearing all these horror stories — crying 3-yr old being patted down, shirtless boy being patted down, nun being patted down and now this man in the urine bag– I have absolutely no confidence in the TSA. And based on news over the weekend and this morning, it appears that our President is not sympathetic, the DHS secretary is not sympathetic, and the TSA director is not sympathetic. What are we the people supposed to do?
http://TheDividedStatesBlog.com Publius219

berserk said:
I started out not too sympathetic with the Opt Out movement because I thought this was counter productive. But after hearing all these horror stories — crying 3-yr old being patted down, shirtless boy being patted down, nun being patted down and now this man in the urine bag– I have absolutely no confidence in the TSA. And based on news over the weekend and this morning, it appears that our President is not sympathetic, the DHS secretary is not sympathetic, and the TSA director is not sympathetic. What are we the people supposed to do?

Watch Glenn Beck, 5 PM on Fox News. He’ll tell us soon enough.
http://TheDividedStatesBlog.com Publius219

This is all part of Soros’ evil plan. By inconveniencing/humiliating airline passengers, you of course inspire them to convert to Islam, and they’ll then subvert/overthrow the government. Duh!
lris

Publius219 said:
This is all part of Soros’ evil plan. By inconveniencing/humiliating airline passengers, you of course inspire them to convert to Islam, and they’ll then subvert/overthrow the government. Duh!

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

I’m with Publius. It’s fun to make fun of old people, children, whites, christians, people with urostomy bags. As a liberal I say screw you to people who don’t want the government to interfere with their lives. As long as I keep recieving my entitlements.

BTW, we democrats don’t want any old people, whites or christians voting for our party anymore. We don’t want or need you.
antikythera

Even suspected criminals are treated better than Mr. Sawyer was. If a police officer had conducted himself as this TSA agent did there would be hell to pay.
Scott_in_MI

SlurpeeSummit said:
Iris im really sorry your daddy rapes you on a daily basis, wait…no im not.

What the hell is wrong with you? Sick bastard. You should be kicked off this site for making such a stupid comment.

Iris: I apologize for that dolt. He’s to stupid to debate anything you said, so he goes on a personal attack.
MerryMarjie

Tell me the name of one single terrorist ever caught in all the scannings, pat-downs, wand-ings and gropings. The TSA chief was on TV the other morning, and all he could talk about was the “Christmas Day Bomber,” otherwise known as the jerk who smuggled explosives in his underwear and tried to ignite himself, caught by the passengers, not by agents of the U.S. In other words, the bomber-who-wasn’t. One other “evil doer” tried to light his shoes on fire, again, caught by passengers. So now we all take off our shoes, and eleven months after the “Christmas Bomber,” we get enhanced groping by the TSA. If it’s so important and we are in such danger, why did we have to wait eleven months for the new security measures? That doesn’t sound too much like “prompt action,” does it.

The bad guys have won, people. Too bad the airlines will pay for this. Amtrak, here I come.