http://www.dallasvoice.com/trans-woman-singled-out-detained-dallas-love-field-10134397.html (http://www.dallasvoice.com/trans-woman-singled-out-detained-dallas-love-field-10134397.html)
An Atlanta transgender woman is alleging discrimination after Dallas police detained her Monday at Love Field, causing her to miss her flight.
Tegan Marie Smith said she was headed home after visiting family in Dallas. After her 3 p.m. flight was canceled, she and a few passengers waiting for the 6 p.m. flight to Atlanta went to the bar inside the terminal. She said she had two beers and a shot during the three hours, but some passengers were drinking more than she was.
Shortly after she boarded the plane, Smith said a flight attendant walked her off the plane to a group of Dallas police officers, who handcuffed her and detained her for public drunkenness for two hours.
"I couldn't understand," she said. "I'd had a little bit to drink over three hours."
Hmmm!
I don't get it... if you're going to arrest people for public drunkenness - why put a bar in the terminal in the first place?
Just my opinion - But that's just plain stupid.
As for other passengers being drunk...
Hmmm . . . something doesn't smell right. Nobody wants to yank anyone off an airplane for no reason and police need probable cause to do that. And airlines lose money when they have to reschedule the passenger. But I would not be surprised if Ms Smith in fact was a perpetual victim who somehow always seems to experience many more incidents like this than anyone else does.
"She said she had two beers and a shot during the three hours", but that may be an understatement on her part to deflect attention from the real reason she was pulled from the airplane. We all know that the usual answer to a cop's question "Have you been drinking?" is almost ALWAYS "Just a couple of beers, Ossifer!"
That she was pulled for flying while transgender is suspect. After all, she made the trip TO Dallas as a transwoman, right?
"but some passengers were drinking more than she was" is immaterial. This incident was most likely based on behavior, as implied in the comment "Smith said she wasn't given a breathalyzer or any other test for drunkenness". I suspect she was acting up and the airline staff took action.
"I did believe I was being singled out," she said. Well, maybe, and since we only have one side of the story as reported by the Dallas Voice we simply do not have a complete picture.
Maybe she's right! Maybe she really was singled out for her trans status. And if so she should pursue a complaint. But if she really was the bad actor in this scenario she won't, and what do you want to bet her hesitance to complain will be blamed on her believe in the "likelihood" that she'll suffer further discrimination and no meaningful action will be taken.
If she was wronged then justice MUST be sought! And I'm not defending The Man, and it pains me to sound so cynical but I've seen this same nonsense play out too many times for me to take this at face value.
I have a problem with us (the trans community) designating every issue as discrimination. There are way too many instances of actual discrimination that we must aggressively fight, and we harm our own cause when we cry wolf and blame others for our own bad behavior. We divert much-needed public attention away from real discrimination in order to give drunken air passengers undue attention while real victims suffer.
Well you don't have to do very much to get crappy treatment on airlines anymore, you do have to do something. People getting a little tipsy at the bar sometimes get a little loud - and it wouldn't surprise me that her trans status got her somewhat even crappier treatment then other passengers would have received. Or, that was what made the other passengers complain when they might not have for other people. That, and Texas does suck. So its' possible that in the overall scheme of things she really didn't do anything, and got punished for it more than others would have.
airport security staff like bailifs and nightclub bouncers seem to be jobs that attract people with a tendancy to enjoy there work abit to much minimum force seems to be rarely used and people who are diffrent can be easy targets
I know Tegan
Her story was that she had three beers and a shot.Others who was onboard the same plane had much more and she felt that she was singled out because she is trans.
The Police did not take a breathalyzer test or any other public drunkenness test. They asked her is she could talk in her man voice, asked her why she wanted a girl name, and a bunch of other weird questions.
Some of her friends on facebook told her not to fight this. I stuck by her.
I told her she should fight this. The fact that she wasn't charge for being drunk or she did not take any breathalyzer test tells me it had nothing to do with her being drunk. If you are removed from a plane for being drunk and handcuffed then you need to take those tests. But instead, she asked her a bunch of transgender questions.
After I gave her words of affirmation and lifted her up she blocked me on FB (Ive been friends with her for 4 years now)...so I don't know what to believe according to this story anymore.