SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) – Newly released video shows the moment an Ogden woman claims a Transportation Security Administration agent forced her to strip down to a sports bra last February.
In the video, you can see DeMille passing through a TSA checkpoint at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, Arizona to board her flight back to Salt Lake City.
DeMille tells ABC4, “I was in yoga pants and a jogger zip-up jacket and nothing but a sports bra underneath. and there is a middle-aged white gentleman on the other end and he says are you wearing something underneath that? And, I said what? And he goes are you wearing something underneath that? So, I zip halfway so he could see I’m in nothing but a sports bra, and he says you have to take that off.”
The video then shows DeMille toss her jacket back to a man.
Officials with TSA tell ABC4 that DeMille was wearing a sweatshirt with a metal zipper, saying “Knowing that the zipper would likely alarm the security screening technology and then require the traveler to receive a pat-down, the TSA officer asked the traveler if she felt comfortable removing the sweatshirt.”
DeMille says, “Not once was I asked are you comfortable taking that off. He simply said you have to take that off.”
TSA officials tell ABC4 something different adding, “The TSA officer’s intent was to offer a more comfortable screening experience and was not told by the traveler that she did not have another shirt under the outer layer.”
But DeMille says she wasn’t comfortable, and after she went through the machine, you can see another TSA agent checking her shoulder area before she collects her belongings for her flight to Salt Lake City.
“It’s almost as if they felt I was supposed to come in with a preconceived knowledge of the event rather than seeing it through how I experienced it,” she says.
DeMille says she is meeting with lawyers to see what she can do legally about this case.
She says nobody should have to publicly strip down as she had to.
