NEW YORK - Security screeners at Kennedy Airport violated procedures this fall when they asked two elderly women to show medical devices concealed beneath their clothing, Homeland Security officials admitted in correspondence made public this week.
In letters to US Senator Charles Schumer and state Senator Michael Gianaris, Transportation Security Administration Administrator John Pistole and Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Betsy Markey said screeners at the airport will get refresher training on how to handle passengers with medical conditions.
The action followed complaints by Lenore Zimmerman, 85, of Long Beach, N.Y., and Ruth Sherman, 88, of Sunrise, Fla., that they were effectively strip-searched in the airport while traveling separately in November.
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Zimmerman, who weighs less than 110 pounds and is in a wheelchair, said that after being escorted into a private room she had to raise her shirt and lower her pants for a female TSA agent and remove her back brace, which went through an X-ray machine.
Sherman said she was humiliated when two female screeners made her lower her sweatpants so they could examine her colostomy bag.
In their letters, Pistole and Markey disputed some details of the women’s accounts.
They said Zimmerman raised her shirt voluntarily. “At no point was the passenger asked to remove any items of clothing,’’ the letters said. But in her letter, Markey admitted that Zimmerman should have been allowed to leave the brace on.
Likewise, she said Sherman had also initially lowered her pants voluntarily, and was never asked to remove any items of clothing, but added that “it is not standard operating procedure for colostomy devices to be visually inspected, and TSA also apologizes for this employee’s action.’’