VIDEO: TSA Tussle With Customer Leads to Lawsuit

[Matt Molnar]

Tussle between TSA and passenger caught on camera, now focus of lawsuit

A New York woman has filed a $10 million lawsuit stemming from her arrest at Washington's Reagan International Airport last year, an arrest she says was unwarranted and abusive.

Police say 31-year-old Robin Kassner was obstructing justice.

Security cameras captured the incident and the video has now been made public. [Full Article]

Video of the incident:


The article includes a video interview where the woman sounds like a complete moron, but regardless, the cop's reaction seems excessive for the circumstances. Tossing an unarmed person into an innocent bystander, even if she said something offensive or threatening, is pretty stupid.

[RDU-JFK]

Looks like it was the cops who tossed her to the ground and not TSA. No one said what the obstruction was about--she must have said some stuff to the TSA agents...

[PhilDernerJr]

Yeah, there's no mention of why she was arrested to begin with, but her whole "...I thought I was going to die," thing was a bit much. What was going on that could possibly make her think her LIFE was in danger?

[T-Bird76]

Is that guy in Blue TSA or the Police? It’s hard to tell and the TSA are getting blue shirts. Why would she sue the TSA if it was the cops who forced her to the ground? Perhaps EMS can give us some details. By the looks of the video the guy in Blue looked like he was using more force the Police office in the jacket.

I guess my questions are... 1. If this was a TSA officer do they have Peace officer status? If not can they perform arrests like this?

By the looks of it, it seems this was a routine bag search and certainly nothing to get upset over. It’s happened to me plenty of times before and it’s no big deal. She's prob just a whinning bitch who deserved what she got, ;)

[Lezam]

From the video, it looks like they were trying to take off her coat. Maybe she was resisting taking it off, and they thought there was something concealed underneath?

[emshighway]

The officer in blue is a Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority police officer not a TSA officer. The situation as I understand it (after all it was over a year ago) the passenger had an amount of over sized liquids and the TSA officer was explaining this to the passenger as he performed a baggage check. During this the passenger can observe but not interfere. This passenger began interfering with the process, the police officer observed this and request a female officer to assist. The passenger continued to interfere and the TSA officer stepped back and asked the police officer to instruct the passenger to not interfere. The passenger can be seen turning her back to the female officer and ignoring her request to step back. At this point since the passenger was confrontational the police officers affected an arrest.

Interference with the screening process is a violation of federal regulations, ignoring police orders is a violation of local laws, being a total idiot is priceless.

While her local charges may have been dropped (local DA's don't bother much with these cases) she is subject to a substantial civil federal penalty (I don't know if she was fined)

[Mateo]

Throwing her down seems pretty excessive - there's nothing evident that she poses any sort of imminent threat. With just a couple of exceptions, MWAA cops tend to be pretty friendly and professional - nothing like the Port.