PORTLAND, Ore. — Harriette Charney, 90, was wrapping up a 2-week visit with her son and getting ready to fly back to the East Coast, when she and her son got to Portland International Airport Saturday morning.
Alan Charney watched as his mom was pulled aside after going through a full-body scanner.
“It was obvious,” says Charney, “they were going into a search, but I presumed they were just going to sort of pat her down.”
It turns out Alan Charney didn’t know that his mom had sewn a small pocket, to hold a few extra dollars, into her bra just in case her wallet was lost or stolen.
The TSA’s “backscatter” body scanner alerted screeners to the pocket.
That’s when Charney says his mom was taken into a room and told to pull off her blouse.
“They wanted her to take, I guess, take all of her clothes off from her waist up,” says Charney, “and so she took off that and took off her bra … and I’m like ‘what??!!”
The TSA says it would be unusual for any screener to ask a passenger to completely remove their shirt instead of lifting it up, and is still looking into what happened during that search.
In a statement, the TSA said “it appears the security system worked as it should….Advanced Imaging Technology safely screens passengers without physical contact for both metallic and non-metallic threats…pat-down screening is used to resolve alarms and anomalies found during the screening process at the checkpoint, including those triggered by imaging technology.”
While a search may have been necessary, Alan Charney says it was handled badly and left his elderly mom shaken.
“There was no sanity or sensitivity at all to the work that they were doing,” says Charney.
not only do we have pedophiles amongst we now have to contend with geriphiles!