In school and airport screening.
DES MOINES – Cecilia Beaman is a 57-year-old grandmother, a principal at Pacific Middle School in Des Moines, and as of Sunday is also a suspected terrorist.
“This is not right,” she told us. It’s not right!”
This past weekend she and several other chaperones took 37 middle school students to a Heritage Festival band competition in California. The trip included two days at Disneyland.
During the stay she made sandwiches for the kids and was careful to pack the knives she used to prepare those sandwiches in her checked luggage. She says she even alerted security screeners that the knives were in her checked bags and they told her that was OK.
But Beaman says she couldn’t find a third knife. It was a 5 1/2 inch bread knife with a rounded tip and a serrated edge. She thought she might have lost or misplaced it during the trip.
On the trip home, screeners with the Transportation Security Administration at Los Angeles International Airport found it deep in the outside pocket of a carry-on cooler. Beaman apologized and told them it was a mistake.
“You’ve committed a felony,” Beaman says a security screener announced. “And you’re considered a terrorist.”
Beaman says she was told her name would go on a terrorist watch-list and that she would have to pay a $500 fine.
How you likin’ that ‘Zero Tolerance’ crap now, Ms. Beaman!
Sorry Ms. Beaman, but your school isn’t half as deadly as a fully fueled Boeing 737. If you caught one of your students with a “5 1/2 inch serrated bread knife” that their parent had accidently put inside their lunchbox after they’d prepared the lunch, you would have no choice but to suspend or expel the student. You would not be allowed to have any mercy on them.
You are no better than any other citizen.
You screwed up and now you have to pay the price.
At least this doesn’t screw up your life as badly as it would the student in my above analogy.
Her action doesn’t add up. I get strange vibes while reading it.
First of all, when escorting a pack of kids to an event far from home, it is customary to pay for their grub at the Arches or some such place, not laboriously make sandwiches for each of them.
Secondly, if she was so knowlegeable of the TSA’s regulations, why did she take any metal utensils at all?
Thirdly, unless she was actually cutting something to put in those sandwiches, why would she have a serrated-edge knife at all?
Fourthly, why would she have a CARRY-ON cooler? That cooler is totally useless on an aircraft flight, and most of them don’t fit carry-on luggage dimensions anyway.
Lastly, the comments attributed to the TSA watchstander are clearly out of bounds. I’m not saying that such comments couldn’t have been made, but it’s unlikely that even one of Norm Mineta’s goons could make such comments and get away with them, even after making a bust. And the business about the fine? Very peculiar. She would have gotten a ticket if there was going to be any action, and she didn’t say that she did. Also, the comment about being the same as a terrorist for being on the watch list: I doubt that said goon would have had the brilliance to think that up. That’s baloney, and not in her sandwiches.
This smells like yesterday’s fish. Something wrong here. This lady made too many mistakes for it to be considered coincidence.
Two possibilities: she is an attention freak, and wanted the notoriety, or she is setting up the TSA for some reason.
Stay tuned to this one. It could get interesting.
BTW, I’m no friend of the TSA. On the way back from my yacht club last night, I listened to the national Lars Larson show. Lars is a local guy who has gone national as a conservative talk show host. He took on the TSA and really opened my eyes. See my blog.