Take a look at this YouTube video of an incident at my home airport of Burbank:

The narrator, who sounds like the lawyer for the woman, tells a convincing story. What say you?

Some more context:

An incident at Bob Hope Airport in which a woman is accused of hitting a federal security agent who allegedly tried to wrest away her 93-year-old mother’s snacks before a flight was caught on tape. Prosecutors charged Nadine Kay Hays, 58, who was traveling to Nashville with her mother, with misdemeanor battery after the reported fight with the Transportation Security Administration agent last April… Nadine Kay Hays was charged with misdemeanor battery after the alleged fight with a Transportation Security Administration agent last April. The agent claimed Hays made a fist and struck her on the hand during the tussle. Hayes denies striking the agent and says she brought down her hand to keep her from taking away her 93-year-old mother’s applesauce, cheese and milk, which were inside a cooler. The two were traveling to a wedding in Nashville, and Hays says she e-mailed TSA ahead of time about the extra baggage…

My thoughts:

TSA rules permit medically necessary items. She should never have been hassled in the first place and the lackadaisical demeanor of the TSA in the video above discounts the argument that her act of grabbing the arm of a TSA agent constitutes battery.

I fly through Terminal B at Burbank at least twice a month and have become familiar with many of the TSA employees at Burbank. They seem to be better than most and also are more senior in age. You would think they would be more empathetic to the medical needs of a senior citizen.

Perhaps the daughter of this woman should have purchased smaller containers of food in order to spare her poor mother any possible hold-up, but the rules say she did not have to.

This is yet another example of incompetence from the TSA that cannot be excused. They don’t even know their own rules…