Anyone who has been to the airport in the past fifteen years knows the TSA drill: shoes off, metal objects in the tray, step through, wait, hope they don’t pick you for additional screening so you can make your flight, etc. For most of us, this is humdrum routine— an annoyance, but something we accept is necessary to keep us “safe”.
Anyone who’s kept up with the news on the TSA over the years knows this accounts for little more than security theatre: undercover tests last year revealed a failure rate of an astonishing 95 percent, with Department of Homeland Security agents able to sneak fake explosives, guns, and other banned weapons through in 67 out of 70 attempts. Those of us with exotic names or darker skin are intimately aware of the targeting of “random” searches by TSA agents. The complaints about the TSA abound.
In what might be the lowest of TSA lows, airport security gave a disabled teenager a severe beating with no real justification.
Hannah Cohen, 18 at the time of her arrest on June 30, 2015, was travelling home to Chattanooga with her mother, Shirley. The pair were leaving Memphis after Hannah’s final treatment for a brain tumor at St. Jude’s. Though they had been through the airport security routine hundreds of times and had a system, the teen girl was subject to intense fear and confusion in unfamiliar situations, a side effects of innumerable surgeries and treatments that had started when she was just two years old.
This meant that when Hannah accidentally tripped the warning alarm, she was immediately frightened. When agents informed Hannah she would need to accompany them to a “sterile area” for a more comprehensive search, she only became more fearful. Hannah attributed the alarm triggering to her shirt, which had sequins, and offered to take it off, but one of the agents laughed at her.
Shirley, hindered by an immobilization boot on a broken foot, hobbled over to a nearby supervisor and informed them of Hannah’s condition. “She is a St Jude’s patient, and she can get confused,” she said. “Please be gentle. If I could just help her, it will make things easier.”
This seemingly had no effect, as shortly after, a voice came over the loudspeaker requesting more agents to their checkpoint. Armed guards appeared and grabbed at Hannah’s arms to restrain her, but the easily disoriented teen tried to get away. The brain tumor Hannah suffered from had left her blind in one eye, deaf in one ear, and partially paralyzed, causing her to become excessively startled.
This semblance of a struggle resulted in the guards slamming Hannah to the ground and smashing her face into the floor. Shirley, helpless in the midst of the chaos and afraid to intervene in case it made matters worse, picked up her phone from the conveyor belt and snapped a picture of Hannah at this point, cuffed, sobbing, with blood smeared across her face. “Another guard pushed me back 20 feet, in my boot, and told me I couldn’t be nearby,” said Shirley, who, as a professor of nursing at Chattanooga State Community, could have helped render aid to her child.
Hannah was whisked away behind a door, presumably to a screening area, then was transported to a hospital, and finally brought to Shelby County jail. She was held for 24 hours before reuniting with her mother in the jail parking lot. The next morning, Hannah appeared before a local judge, who recommended they get legal representation. All charges against Hannah were dropped two days later, and the family was refunded the $250 in court fees they had paid.
Now, the family is suing the TSA and the Memphis-Shelby County airport authority, seeking damages amounting to $100,000 and costs, alleging the TSA didn’t provide Hannah adequate accommodation to screen her and discriminated against her on the basis of her disability. The TSA has so far declined to comment.