Until recently, Carol Price was an employee of the Transportation Security Administration. As a member of the TSA’s blue-shirted legion of gropers, Price enjoyed plenary immunity to touch air travelers in any way she chose. When passing through airport security at Southwest Florida International Airport on April 20, Price was on the receiving end of the treatment her agency routinely inflicts on the public, and she didn’t like it at all.
After enduring an act of public molestation in which a TSA agent palpated her chest and inner thighs, Price demanded to see a supervisor. Understandably angry and offended, Price performed the same procedure on the TSA supervisor. The supervisor herself was outraged by the assault, and demanded that Price not touch her – a perfectly understandable demand mere citizens aren’t permitted to make.
Price was arrested and charged with battery and resisting an officer. She is not the first to face prosecution for doing to a TSA screener as that agency’s employees routinely do to us.
In 2004, 62-year-old Appleton, Wisconsin resident Phyllis Dintenfass was selected for “secondary screening” at the Outagamie County Airport when something she wore set off the metal detector at the Outagamie County Regional Airport. Mrs. Dintenfass put up no resistance as TSA supervisor Anita Gostisha used an electronic “wand” to scan for metal objects. But she understandably rebelled when Gostisha used the back of her hands to check the area beneath Dintenfass’s breasts. According to Dintenfass, her reaction was to mimic the unwanted and uninvited physical contact while exclaiming, “How would you like it if I did that to you?”
Gostisha’s version of the event, predictably, was melodramatic and self-serving. She claimed that the middle-aged woman — described by all who knew her as mild and not prone to violence – “slammed her against the wall.” Leaving aside the fact that this would be an entirely justified response to a sexual assault, Gostisha’s version was disputed by her victim and not corroborated by any other witnesses.
However, since Gostisha is a member of the Regime’s punitive caste, her person — unlike that of her victim — is sacred. Accordingly, Dintenfass was arrested and charged with “assaulting” a federal official. She was found guilty of that purported crime and sentenced to a year of probation and 100 hours of “community service.”
Victorious federal prosecutor Tim Funnell insisted that Mrs. Dintenfass “punished Anita Gostisha for doing her job.” U.S. Attorney Steven Bispukic piled on, protesting that TSA officers, who perform a “vital function,” are “entitled to protection from assault” — that is, they’re entitled to “protection” from the same treatment they inflict on their betters. It’s difficult to find a better illustration of the principle that government is simply a criminal syndicate that has achieved impunity.
At the time Mrs. Dintenfass was molested in Appleton, the treatment she endured was exceptional. Eight years later, it is quite commonplace as an alternative to being irradiated by the TSA’s porno-scanners. TSA functionaries are now instructed to use open hands and fingers “to go over one’s body, including the genital area and breasts,” in the words of a protest letter filed a couple of years ago on behalf of a group of airline pilots disgusted with the expanded checkpoint ritual.
The charges filed against Carol Price, and the official persecution of the rightly aggrieved Phyllis Dintenfass, demonstrate beyond rebuttal that each time a TSA drone places hands on a captive air traveler, he is committing an act of criminal assault.
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