“gropes women” ? Cory, you’re definitely a fiction writer.
Covenant? Really? So they have Grunts going through your baggage? Hope you didn’t pack a needler…
This was way funnier when Benny Hill tried it.
Wait, what? At a heavily surveilled checkpoint where the identity of everyone going through is verified and recorded, and presumably the whole incident is on timestamped video from multiple angles, they can’t find complaining witnesses because they got on a plane somewhere?
So, like, I can commit any kind of crimes I want to in an airport as long as I make sure my victims board their flight?
That, and makes sure your ID card isn’t from the District of Columbia.
Anyone flying through any airport in the last 10+ years who was groped should contact the TSA to file a complaint. We must get that criminal!
Are you an airline or the government? Then probably, yes.
This time, however, he caught the attention of real screeners, who figured something was wrong because male screeners are prohibited from taking women into the booth for a pat-down without a female screener also being present.
I guess if he’d been interested in groping men he would have gotten away with it. Or if a woman was interested in groping women.
What depresses me is, even if they found one of his victims, I don’t see how they can charge him with Sexual Assault, since the entire defense of why what “legitimate” screeners are doing isn’t also sexual assault is that people entering that area have consented to the search. They arn’t, after all, actual LEO’s, if something comes up, they have to summon the “real” authorities, after all, so, they’ve got no law enforcement or other protection to hide behind, they are ordinary citizens in funny clothes and blue gloves that you allow a sexual assault from.
They could get him for impersonation, sure, but they can do that now, without one of his victims. But the depressing fact is, we don’t question, and in fact, seem to have no right to question, people in a particular space wearing a particular set of clothing, when they ask to sexually assault us. And once you take our ability to do anything but consent, how is his action any different from that of the other “screeners”? That he got off on it? I’d be willing to bet that at least some of the TSA types do to. That it serves no legitimate security purpose? That differentiates it from the “legitimate” searches how? This guy’s crime is a needle in a stack of needles.
I thought the same thing. I think the language of the post is misleading though - it’s not that he can’t be charged with anything, it’s just that until the talk to the victims they don’t know what to charge him with. I imagine just from the video evidence they must have probable cause to arrest him for a number of things, but since there are probably (hopefully) not cameras in the areas where they might fondle or ask people to disrobe, they don’t have evidence of contact of a sexual nature.
@SirCracked: there is a concept in the law called “fraud in the factum” which covers this kind of thing.
Erm, I don’t think Fraud in the Factum would apply, as that’s a defense to being held to the consequence of some deception, nothing to do with the punishment of the one committing the initial fraud. Further, on looking into it, the example that came up was a case where someone used fraud to convince someone to have sex with them, convincing them that sex with them was a “life saving treatment”, was found not to have committed rape.
In any case, the argument I’m making isn’t a legal one, or that this person’s behavior isn’t abhorrent. It’s that abhorrent treatment has been NORMALIZED. That they can’t realistically convict him of a crime, because that might pull down the blanket on the fact that the same crime is being committed tens of thousands of times a day right next to it, and at airports all over this country. I don’t see any meaningful difference in his act than from the people who are there as a job.
In fact, if you get right down to it, I find one guy getting his jollies off against other people’s will a lot LESS disturbing than the fact that there are others who are employed and required by the government to commit the exact same act!
Yes, you’re right. The correct term would be fraud in the inducement. It’s been a long time since law school. Also, that’s a concept carried from contract law and possibly torts, so I’m not sure about similar caselaw in the criminal sphere. I would mention that the case you brought up is (I think) often viewed as historical and that in many states no longer serves as precedent. I think. Like I said, law school was a long time ago. 
As for the underlying argument that abhorrent treatment has been normalized, I agree completely.
I bet this didn’t work out when he tried this at Best Buy
And try to avoid drinking alcohol at least two hours before your grope session.
If anyone can walk in and take over as a screener (even whilst drunk), then this rather points out the pointlessness of TSA’s security screens, doesn’t it?
That’s the line of thinking I was heading down. Kinda convenient way to smuggle something onto a plane. Doh.
Funny how the national narrative of “Land of the free, Home of the brave” clashes with the reality of docility through authoritarian pavlovian conditioning. But that’s no TSA phenomenon - I always wondered why the US has one of the most authoritarian police forces of all western democracies.
congratulations TSA, your repeated “submissiveness training” is working. the free people of the USA no longer care about their rights.
It did, but they just showed him their receipts so it was a lot less fun.
