Thu, Apr 24, 2003
Security in Australia Makes TSA's (Many) Excesses Look
Nearly Rational
The Melbourne (Australia) Herald Sun is
reporting on a Sunday incident that underlines why the public are
genuinely irritated with so-called 'security' measures, and
particularly with airport screeners.
Melbourne uses Chubb Protective Services for screening, and the
company is now as famous, and as popular, as that Chinese guy who
carried SARS onto the first airliner last year.
Kathleen O'Kelly-Kennedy, 16, identified as "Australia's tallest
female basketball player," was humiliated when security guards
forced her to remove her prosthetic right leg. (She was born
with a short leg.)
She explained to the paper, "It is quite clear
when I lift my pants that I wear a leg prosthesis. I had also given
it a few whacks, so there was no doubt that it sounded like a false
leg. It was too much that security staff then chose to frisk me,
from ankle to hip, in front of dozens of other passengers. I had
already taken my shoes off, which made standing difficult, and I
was not even offered a seat."
Standing out in a crowd is a normal thing for Kathleen -- she
is, after all, very tall -- but this was different. She's used to
people's looking, she said, "but what happened on Sunday puts my
difference in a whole new and negative public light."
She said that other kids, some of them disabled athletes
returning from the games, were also put through the wringer,
wheelchairs and all. Her parents were quoted as saying, "It was sad
after a great week in South Australia that some kids left in tears
or angry at how they had been treated at the airport."
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