A Florida firefighter says he couldn't
believe it when Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents gave
"intrusive" pat-downs to passengers including kids getting off an Amtrak
train in
Savannah, Georgia earlier this month.
Lt. Brian Gamble, 38, of Leesburg, Florida, posted video of the incident
on YouTube. And the TSA is now apologizing.
Gamble, who also works part-time as a travel agent, tells
AOL Travel News
he was bringing a small group that included other firefighters and
policemen to Savannah for a Valentine's Day getaway. They were among 30
or 40 people getting off the train when he says TSA officers ordered
everyone into the terminal.
"They sent us all into a roped-off holding area and said 'Y'all are
going to be searched,'" Gamble says. "We were getting off the train.
This didn't make sense."
Once in the area, the group was guarded while
TSA officers began
doing what Gamble says were "intrusive"
pat-downs.
When he saw a family with young kids in the lineup, he took out his
camera and started filming. He does not know the identity of the family.
"They were in front of us. They (the TSA agents) started lifting their
shirts and wanding them."
Gamble's wife, Traci, 38, and a female friend were also searched and he
says female TSA officers made them lift their shirts up to their
midriffs and patted their bras.
"One guy went through (Traci's) hand luggage and smelled her perfume and
made comments about it smelling good. It was just not professional. It
was just weird," Gamble says.
"My wife was livid," he adds. "We thought this is silly, we are being
harassed by the TSA."
Nearing the front of the line for his own search, Gamble complained to a
TSA supervisor but says he was told to calm down. "They wouldn't give us
an explanation for the search."
Meanwhile, the passengers' luggage was sitting on the train platform. So
the fireman waved over an officer from the Georgia State Patrol to point
that out.
"I explained what was going on, he left for a few minutes and then came
back and took six of us in our group and said 'Sorry about that, go get
your luggage, you're good to go.'"
Gamble says he would have had no problem with such a search happening on
a train, "But getting off the train, that was kind of backwards."
With Gamble's video gaining steam on the Internet, the TSA
took to its blog over the weekend to explain what happened.
The TSA's Blogger Bob writes that what the Savannah train passengers
encountered is known as a VIPR operation, a randomized search "where
anyone entering an impacted area has to be screened."
Such searches – involving federal, state and local law enforcement –
were stepped up in 2004 in the wake of the Madrid train bombings in
which 181 people were killed, and happen around the country on a regular
basis, the TSA says.
"In this case, the Amtrak station was the subject of the VIPR operation
so people entering the station were being screened for items on the
Amtrak prohibited items list as seen in the video," Blogger Bob writes.
But Bob adds the TSA learned the VIPR operation in Savannah "should have
ended by the time these folks were coming through the station since no
more trains were leaving the station. We apologize for any inconvenience
we may have caused for those passengers."
The TSA says the passengers did not have to go into the terminal to
leave the station. But Gamble says the TSA agents didn't give them a
choice.
"Their apology is kind of lame," he says. "I thought this whole thing
was very unprofessional and very shady."
