Lenore Zimmerman, 85, was angry and embarrassed after what she claims was a strip search at Kennedy Airport Tuesday. Now another woman in her 80ÂŒs at the very same terminal says she was exposed one day before.From her home in Sunrise, Florida, 88-year-old Ruth Sherman says she knows for a fact senior citizens are being violated at a screening checkpoint at JFK.
gI felt like I was invaded,h she told CBS 2ÂŒs Dave Carlin.
Sherman says week-long Thanksgiving holiday with family in New York ended with an ordeal that started when the screeners wanted to check the bulge from Shermanfs colostomy bag.
gThis is private for me. Itfs bad enough that I have it,h she said. gI had to pull from my sweatpants and I had to pull my underwear, my underwear down.h
gYou donft do that anybody,h she added. gI felt like I was invaded.h
She says she initially complained to JetBlue and told her family, but is now going public after watching Zimmerman on television, recounting a frighteningly similar tale of what she says was her strip search, at the same JetBlue terminal at JFK, one day later.
gThey decide this 85-year-old lady needs to be strip searched,h Zimmerman said. gAfter they patted me down, they took me into a private room and they strip searched me. I said ewhy are you strip searching me? Do I like look a terroristf?h she said.
Zimmerman says she was allowed to keep her top on.
Zimmerman, who lives most of the year in Long Beach, Nassau County and spends the winters in South Florida, says she will sue the Transportation Security Agency. She said she wanted a patdown, that her defibrillator is why she cannot go through the machine, but that she never expected a strip search.
The TSA released a statement Sunday, apologizing to Zimmerman but disputing her story.
gTSA contacted the passenger to apologize that she feels she had an unpleasant screening experience; however, TSA does not include strip searches in its protocols and a strip search did not occur in this case,h the statement read.
It's a matter of semantics. If they hauled her into a back room, they strip-searched her, or close enough to it. I get what she means. I guess we're going to have to come up with a new class of pervert here to cover those who like to strip search frail grandmothers and nuns in wheelchairs and walkers against their will.
State Senator Michael Gianaris of Queens wonders how the TSA can be so sure. He says with no cameras in the private screening rooms, it is a screenerfs word against the passengerfs.
gItfs outrageous,h he said. gWhat they need to find out is exactly what happened and if someone crossed the line they need to be penalized.h
gI missed my flight and I had to wait two and a half hours for the next one,h Zimmerman said.
When she finally made it to her winter home in Coconut Creek, Florida, she called her son Bruce in Long Beach, Nassau County, who told CBS 2 the family plans to sue the TSA.
gI do want them to have some sort of consequence. I think the two agents that escorted or initiated the strip search should be terminated,h Bruce Zimmerman said.
Zimmerman will return to New York in early April, but admits that she is nervous after her experience.
Both Sherman and Zimmerman say many times seniors are too cooperative and afraid to speak up when humiliated. Sherman wants that to change.
Great. Now they'll probably make it standard operational procedure to tackle you and throw you in prison.
CBS 2 contacted a TSA spokesman about Ruth Shermanfs alleged strip search and were told only that the TSA will research this new case.
"Research" apparently means to figure out how to deny everything people don't have photographic proof of.
| Unfortunately, the day many years ago that Palestinian (?) terrorist gave his unknowing, pregnant Irish girlfriend a suitcase bomb to carry onto an airplane, this kind of thing was guaranteed. |