Boston MA May 4 2019 5 Investigates obtained dozens of complaints against the Transportation Security Administration filed by passengers at Logan Airport and found some flyers claim they were subjected to inappropriate conduct while passing through security.

If you fly, you know. It’s part of the routine, like it or not — passing through security checkpoints.

Last month, TSA officers screened the most passengers ever in one day at Logan Airport: 77,541.

The lines can be long; the waiting a bit frustrating. And then there’s the wondering whether you’ll make it through without you or your bags facing more scrutiny.

But there’s really no way around it. Most of the time you put the security screening experience behind you and fly on to your destination. Most of the time, but not always.

“It was just wrong, and I knew it was wrong,” said one male passenger who asked us to protect his anonymity.

He talked about an encounter with TSA officers at Logan Airport last July. He flies regularly for work, usually without incident since he is enrolled in TSA Pre-Check, which comes with expedited security screening.

But on that day, TSA officers singled him out for an enhanced security screening, which included a full-body pat-down.

 “He went up one leg and hit my testicle hard enough for me to jump and cause pain and I complained to him about that,” he said. “And then he proceeded to come around to the front and took his hand and rubbed it four times very, very slowly and very deliberately across my manhood.”

In a statement to 5 Investigates, the TSA said, “Pat-downs are designed to detect any item that may be artfully concealed on a person’s body including… some sensitive areas.”

The statement continued, saying that the TSA and the Massachusetts State Police viewed a video of the screening at issue and “…determined that it was a routine pat-down…”

5 Investigates asked the man if he thought the alleged assault was intentional.

“I know it was intentional. I absolutely know it was intentional,” he said.

5 Investigates obtained more than 170 passenger complaints about TSA at Logan Airport through a Freedom of Information Act request. The complaints date back to January 2017 and include:

A woman who said, “I was so humiliated,” after her bags of breast milk set off the detector and she was subjected to a full-body pat-down. “People were stopping and staring at me.”

A woman who described a “humiliating” process after she was frisked four times in public view and then taken to a private room and told to drop her pants for screening.

A 63-year-old passenger who complained about an “invasive search,” saying “the agent said he had to check my genital area five times.”

A man who said he was “publicly humiliated and emotionally shaken” after TSA agents did a pat-down of “intimate areas” of his body and unpacked all his luggage in public view. The 60-minute screening caused him to miss his flight.

“It’s humiliating. It’s frightening,” said Barbara Dougan, civil rights director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Massachusetts.

Dougan said her office has received close to a dozen complaints from Muslim travelers in the last two years about TSA officers at Logan.

One of them is a 54-year-old mother of three. “It was as if they felt like they had to find something on her. They kept going back and forth looking at her,” Dougan said.

CAIR said a TSA officer rammed screening equipment up into her crotch.

“It was incredibly traumatic,” Dougan said. “It felt to her the equivalent of a sexual assault the way the wand was used against her body.”

TSA told CAIR it was “…unable to… corroborate the allegations…”

It is a common explanation that provides little comfort to passengers who say they know what they endured.

“I want to make sure that TSA agents do their job and they understand that they will be held accountable when they cross that line,” said the man who accused TSA officers of sexually assaulting him. “And a line was absolutely crossed that day.”

A TSA spokesperson said the agency emphasizes treating all travelers with respect, dignity, and courtesy, and it regrets that some checkpoint screening may not have been conducted to passenger expectations.

TSA records show Logan had more complaints about screenings and pat-downs in 2017 and 2018 than similar sized airports across the country.

“I’ve been treated in a gruff manner by TSA officers in the past,” said Anthony Amore, a former assistant Federal Security Director at TSA in Boston after the agency was formed in the wake of 9/11.

5 Investigates asked Amore if interactions should get heated while fliers pass through checkpoints.

“No,” he said. “I mean, ideally, when passengers are going through a checkpoint, every one of them is treated the same, they’re treated with dignity and courteously and with the sole mission of making sure that the TSA is providing top-flight security.”

“I would say that I don’t think there’s a problem with TSA officers sexually assaulting people at airports,” Amore added.

But he also said he is not surprised to hear about complaints due to both the high number of people flying through Logan and the nature of TSA’s job.

“You’re talking about a job where you have to touch people pretty close to their intimate areas and be sure that they’re not carrying a dangerous weapon,” Amore said. “How could they have not gotten some complaints?”

The TSA points out the complaints make up a small fraction of millions of people who are screened at Logan every year.

We asked the TSA if any of its officers at Logan have been disciplined for mistreating passengers during the screening process.

A spokesperson told us we’d have to submit a new Freedom of Information Act request to get that answer, which we’ve now done.

It’s worth pointing out the TSA took six months to process our last FOIA request.

WCVB

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