Add 85-year-old grandmothers using walkers to returning veterans and bitter clingers on Homeland Security’s list of potential terrorists

Posted: December 4, 2011 | Author: barenakedislam

After a humiliating strip search by TSA agents at JFK Airport, Lenore Zimmerman missed her flight to Ft. Lauderdale.  How’s that system working out for you now, Butch Napolitano?

NY DAILY NEWS (H/T Malakh)  Lenore Zimmerman, 85, who lives in Long Beach, says she was on her way to a 1 p.m. flight to Fort Lauderdale when security whisked her to a private room and took off her clothes. “I walk with a walker — I really look like a terrorist,” she said sarcastically. “I’m tiny. I weigh 110 pounds and I was strip-searched.”

As she tried to lift a lightweight walker off her lap, she says, the metal bars banged against her leg and blood trickled from a gash. “My sock was soaked with blood,” she said. “I was bleeding like a pig.” She says the TSA agents showed no sympathy, instead pulling down her pants and asking her to raise her arms.

TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said a review of closed circuit TV footage from the airport shows “proper procedures were followed.”

But Zimmerman, whose hunched back puts her at 4-foot-11, said her ordeal began after her son, Bruce, drove her to the JetBlue terminal for the Florida flight. She checked her bags, waited for a wheelchair and parted ways with her doting son — her only immediate relative.

When Zimmerman reached a security checkpoint, she asked if she could forgo the advanced image technology screening equipment, fearing it might interfere with her defibrillator. She said she normally gets patted down. But this time, she says that two female agents escorted her to a private room and began to remove her clothes.

As she tried to lift a lightweight walker off her lap, she says, the metal bars banged against her leg and blood trickled from a gash. “My sock was soaked with blood,” she said. “I was bleeding like a pig.” She says the TSA agents showed no sympathy, instead pulling down her pants and asking her to raise her arms.

The TSA claims, “Our screening procedures are conducted in a manner designed to treat all passengers with dignity, respect and courtesy,” Farbstein said.

Zimmerman says a medic arrived to treat her injury. The process took so long that she missed her 1 p.m. flight and had to catch a later one. Her son said he was shocked when his mom called around 9 p.m. that night and described what happened. Zimmerman, who takes blood thinners, later had a tetanus shot for fear of infection from the walker wound.

Posted on 4 Dec 11 by BNI