Transportation Security Administration officials say they did nothing wrong in a pat-down search of a 4-year-old girl at a Kansas airport recently. But the youth's mother and grandmother say the child became hysterical during the examination.
What 4-year-old would not be frightened out of her wits in such a situation?
It happened after the child hugged her grandmother at the airport. Presumably, TSA agents have been trained to suspect that in such cases, contraband may have been transferred to a child.
So perhaps it was all "by the book." But what if the "book" is wrong? What if the "book" lacks common sense in certain situations?
No doubt TSA?agents have an often difficult and sometimes unpopular job, and by and large, agents do their job without interfering with airline passengers. But there have been plenty of cases similar to this one, where elderly passengers have been embarrassed or children have been frightened by their treatment at the hands (sometimes literally) of an over-zealous TSA?agent.
Surely some means of handling the situation in Kansas without terrifying a child could have been found. We're not opposed to TSA?agents doing their job properly, but we are concerned that too often some of those agents aren't given the leeway to exercise a bit of common sense.