High School Teacher Halts Stadium Pat-Downs
Nov. 27, 2005 — -- Football fans who hate going through the security pat-downs before entering a stadium should thank Gordon Johnston, a 60-year-old high school teacher.
Johnston, a Tampa Bay Buccaneers season ticket holder, enlisted the ACLU's help in suing the Tampa Sports Authority because he felt the searches were "invasive without necessity."
"I'm a government teacher and I realized, to me, that was an unreasonable search," Johnston said.
The courts ruled in Johnston's favor, and the searches have stopped at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa -- for now. The TSA has appealed the decision.
Pat-Downs Dangerous?
Johnston believes the pat-downs may do more harm than good.
"It backs up the people as they're in line," he said. "If you were a possible terrorist, that would be the logical place to do it [attack], because that's where you'd take the greatest loss of life.
"If you look at where terrorist attacks occur, they occur in completely unsecured environments," said John Goldsmith, an attorney with the ACLU in Florida and one of Gordon's lawyers on the case. "So this backup that occurs while people are going through pat-down searches creates what experts call a target-rich environment, and so creates much greater risk."
The TSA, which operates the stadium, began the pat-downs in September after the NFL asked all 32 stadiums to conduct them as an added security measure. The NFL says the searches are designed to catch suicide bombers.
"This is tied to a specific problem -- the suicide bomber that puts the package on their person," the NFL's senior director of security, Milt Ahlerich, told ESPN. "That's what happened in London, and that's what we're seeing around the world. Unfortunately, I'm afraid it may come to this country, too."
Johnson doesn't buy it.
"What happens in a subway in London has nothing to do with what we call the NFL," he said.
"For four years I went to NFL football games after 9/11, felt safe and secure, and I still feel safe and secure," he added.