“You’ve committed a felony. And you’re considered a terrorist,” security screeners at LAX told Cecilia Beaman, a 57-year-old grandmother and principal at Pacific Middle School in Des Moines (a Seattle ‘burb).
Beaman helped chaperone 37 middle school students to a Heritage Festival band competition in California, reports KOMO TV. She made sandwiches during the trip, misplaced a bread knife, but alerted screeners to the other two knives in her checked luggage. LAX’s finest found the missing knife “deep in the outside pocket of a carry-on cooler.”
Beaman apologized but “was told her name would go on a terrorist watch-list” and that she’d have to pay a $500 fine.
“[W]hat about my constitutional rights? And they said ‘not at this point … you don’t have any’,” Beaman said. More below:
And we wonder why tourists from other countries are afraid to visit the U.S.?
More from the article at KOMO TV, Seattle’s ABC affiliate:
“They said ‘no’ and they said it’s a national security issue. And I said what about my constitutional rights? And they said ‘not at this point … you don’t have any’.”
KOMO News did reach a spokesperson with the Transportation Security Administration for comment. They said they did not have record of Beaman’s confrontation but did admit that TSA screeners are, by design, becoming more strict.
Despite continued warnings to passengers, TSA screeners say travelers continue to bring banned items in their carry-on luggage. Knives, guns, and other weapons are found and confiscated daily.
Fines issued for knives and other sharp objects range from $250 to $1,500. Fines issued for firearms discovered in carry-on luggage range from $1,500 to $7,500.
The TSA web site also indicates firearms violations will be referred for potential criminal prosecution. The same site does not propose the same criminal referral for knives like the one Cecilia Beaman was carrying.
“This is not the way my country should be treating me,” she said. My concern is that if that’s the way they’re treating American citizens I would hate to think how they’re treating other people. It’s crazy.”
The TSA reminds travelers that is has the authority to impose civil penalties up to $10,000 per violation.
“TSA needs the help of the traveling public in reducing the number of prohibited items brought to airport screening checkpoints,” reads the Sanction Guidelines section of the TSA web site. “TSA recognizes that most passengers who carry prohibited items do so without any ill intent. TSA does not impose fines on the vast number of passengers who inadvertently carry prohibited items. Dealing with any prohibited item, however, adds time to the screening process both for the traveler who brought the item and for other travelers as well.”
(Via PEEK, at Alternet.)
If that is not the face of a terrorist, I don’t know what is. Oh, their good…real good. The frumpy hairstyle, the grandmother glasses, the pink outfit. They are not fooling anyone. Thankfully our trained homeland security operative saw Beaman for what she is: a disassembler.
Send her to Gitmo. When we are finished she will either sing like a canary and admit she is part of the Des Moines cell or we will let her go in a year and she and everyone who knows her will hate us for the rest of their lives.
Hah. Let her go? Never. She will stay in the gula… I mean detention center until she converts to christi… I mean comes to realize the benefits of capitalism and democracy.
Besides… letting her go after a year of imprisonment without charges would be admitting we make mistakes on occasion. Never!
Good point. If we let her go, she will be right back in the terminal smuggling knives onto planes.
Sure, that slack-jawed look is disarming, but she was trained to look that way.
Well, she looks an awful lot like my fifth grade teacher, and I remain utterly convinced that that woman was a terrorist..she sure terrorized the hell out of me…
I don’t see any point in putting her in Gitmo. Peeing on the Koran would probably have no effect on her.
I suggest extraordinary rendition to Uzbekistan. Boiling some of her body parts ought to make her talk.
Just because some low level government hack says she has no rights does not make it so. Even Padilla has rights (and probably a pretty decent chance for a huge lawsuit against the government), if he can ever get access to a lawyer.
However, what Constitutional right is she talking about. She did violate the law, albeit unintentionally. And technically, flying (as well as driving) is considered a privilege, not a right.
However, the TSA agent appears to have had a severe case of Cartmanitis (“You will respect my authoritay”)
Includes the right to know the charges against you, the right to prepare a defense against those charges and then presnt that defense to a tribunal.
Moreover, I seriously doubt that fines ranging into the thousands of dollars (I may be wrong, haven’t looked up the limit yet) can be levied under a strict liability theory where simply possesing the knife would be enough to sanction the lady. If she had no mens rea (bad mind, either through negligence, recklassness or intent) she has done nothing wrong and is entitled to raise that defense.
Additionally, despite the “priviledge not a right” BS they teach in driver’s ed, access to means of transportation is something that the Gov’t can not deny you without due process- ever heard of traffic court?
</grump>
ACLU and EPIC among others, are attacking the lack of due process. Also Gilmore v. Gonzales. [refused to show ID to board a domestic flight.]
Cicero,
What you are talking about existed prior to the Fascist (Bushco and thugs) and pre TSA (American Gestapo). Under the current Administration, the only Americans with any rights are the correct believing ones, you know the American Talibaptist. Unless all Americans stand up to the Fascists and exercise our right to change our government without the Fascists illegally rigging the elections, we as a nation under a democratic republic will have lost our country to these fascists. I for one and not willing to let that happen, not here in Kansas with a Talibaptist as an Attorney General nor nationwide. I call on all Americans who hold to this claim, arise and throw off the burden of this fascist and theocratic tyranny.
Do not make this a lawless country. One of the few ways one can fight back is by respecting the rule of law. I will not say that if we abandon the law we are no better than the theives in the White House, however to be effective we must live by the law and be ready to defend the benefits of living under the rule of law.
Lawlessness aids ChimpCo, whose deluded beleif in their own superiority for the basis for a twisted beleif that taking as much as possible from their “lessers” is not only acceptable but a moral imperitive. That is why ChimpCo encourages disrespect for the law.
IMHO “ownership society” means a society where posessian, even if by force, is substituted for law- keep the little people fighting over crumbs and the Straussian elite can grab with two hands.
Lastly, the right of the people to overthrow a tyranny (per the Declaration of Independence and the implied right of the people to revolt within the 9th Amendment) is contingent of the success of any revolution- e.g. revolution is only justifiable if it is successful. For revolution to be successful one must get close enough to those in authority to remove them- hence the old saying- keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment. I am in no way implying that this revolution be of a violent nature. I am imploring my fellow citizens to take to the ballot box, at the local level and remove these theocrats and fascists starting there and working our way up. That is how this insidious disease infected our country and that is how it will be cured of this infection. I will work within the system of my government until such time as that system has completely taken away any such opportunity to change it from within. Until such time and I believe all Americans will recognize when that time has come, I will do all I can to make sure anyone who will listen and comprehend that our current regime cares nothing at all for anyone who is not a part of the excessive elite that has formented hatred, despair and avarice within our society.
Phft! Grandmother my ass. I’m a grandmother and I sure as hell don’t look like that. That is a terrorist if I ever saw one. I mean Jeez, would you leave your kids with someone like that? Lock her up and throw away the key I say! Now, off with you!!
and I have to fly to a wedding I don’t want to go to on Thursday. Maybe I can use this for an excuse to stay home? Naw, my republican sister would never fall for that now. Only WMDs in Iraq or Bushie Boy is great and smart and the best thiong that ever happened to these here United damn States…hah!
Dear 57-year-old sandwich makin’ grammy: yes, “they” are now treating plenty of American citizens this way. Haven’t you heard about Homeland Security??
But if those unintentional knife-wielders also happen to look “swarthy,”* those individuals don’t usually end up making their case on the nightly news.
*Ann Coulter’s term
.
The World held its breath, until finally the Pentagon investigation uncovers the TRUTH.
After three years of GITMO torture, a number of holiday flights out to Syria, Egypt and Uzbekistan, two detainees admitted today they flushed the Qu’ran themselves!
The guards at Guantánamo Bay only pissed on the Qu’ran, it has been confirmed.
I’m glad the Pentagon manages to frame broad info, into several acts for us poor souls, and the ignorant 1.3bn Muslims globally, can understand. I’m sure all problems between Christians and Muslims are just about solved.
Geez … big difference, flushing through a virgin clean toilet or just pissing on the Qu’ran. No more protests in Afghanistan.
Oui – Liberté – Egalité – Fraternité
The more the TSA employees “work to the rule”, the more grannies get busted, the more the bureaucrats slavishly bow to the politics behind the law, the closer we get to repeal. Keep up the good work.
To the D.C. policy bureaucrats: WARNING! You are definitely in need of immediate anal-cranial surgery. BE ADVISED that the only time any terrorist has ever been caught it was through the individual efforts of experienced human beings with no technology involved.
[p.s. How’s that AMTRAK program coming? Busses? Ships? F*CKING RENTAL AGENCIES?]
RIGHT ON!
It’s all a huge joke. On the U.S. taxpayers. And the sooner the American public figures that out, the better off we’ll be.
My favorite example of the brainwashing done on the American public are the remarks by the mother of the young Mormon woman in SLC who was murdered by her husband (her body was later found in an SLC landfill).
On Oprah, the mother said that at least she won’t have to worry that her daughter will be killed by terrorists.
This is what happens when John Ashcroft and now Gonzalez demand the right to define a terrorist in any way that they see fit.
That security guard clearly hates America. He does not understand anything about due process in the eyes of the law. After all, in his book, judges have no divisions.