It’s the height of the summer vacation season. A time when air travel–and airline arrogance–are at their annual height.
Consider the following real-life scenario:
- You’re vacationing in Denver and must return to San Francisco for an urgent-care medical appointment
- You’re disabled but nevertheless arrive at the airport on time.
- The airport–in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act–doesn’t have anyone assigned to help disabled passengers get onto departing planes.
- As a result, you arrive at the gate–just as the plane takes off.
- The airline informs you that if you want to board a plane, you’ll have to pay for another ticket.
- You can’t afford to buy another ticket–and your urgent-care appointment is tomorrow.
What do you do?
In this case, the stranded passenger–a friend of mine–called me: Bureaucracybuster.
First, I instinctively called the airline company. And that meant starting at the top–the president’s office.
I punched the name of the airline–and the words, “Board of Directors”–into Google. This gave me several websites to click on to obtain the information I needed.
I started dialing–and quickly hung up: I had just remembered the day was a Sunday. Nobody but cleaning crews would be occupying the airline’s executive offices that day.
I had to start all over.
Next, I decided to call Denver Airport and find an official who would help Rachel onto another flight–without charging her for it.
I didn’t know where to start, so I decided that starting anywhere was just fine. As I was routed from one person to another, I would develop a sense of who I needed to reach.
Some of those I reached seemed genuinely concerned with Rachel’s plight. Others gave me the “that’s-life-in-the-big-city” attitude.
One of the latter felt I wasn’t deferential enough in my tone. He threatened to notify the chief of airport security.
“Go ahead,” I said. “I once worked for the United States Attorney’s Office. I’ll be glad to talk with him.”
He backed off–just as I had assumed he would.
Usually the best way to deal with threats is to directly confront the person making them.
(A friend of mine, Richard St. Germain, spent part of his 11 years with the U.S. Marshals Service protecting Mafia witnesses.
Witness being protected by deputy U.S. marshals
(Many of them didn’t like the places where they were to be relocated under new identities. “I’m going to complain to the Attorney General,” some of them would threaten.
(St. Germain would reach for his office phone, plant it before the witness, and say, “Call him. I’ll give you his number.” The witness always backed off.)
Eventually I reached the Chief of Airport Operations.
I outlined what had happened. He didn’t seem very sympathetic. So I decided to transfer the problem from Rachel to the airport.
Without raising my voice, I said: “It isn’t her fault that your airport was in non-compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act and she missed her flight because there wasn’t anyone to assist her.”
Suddenly his tone changed–and I could tell I had definitely reached him.
No doubt visions of federal investigations, private lawsuits and truly bad publicity for his airport flashed across his mind. And all this had been achieved without my making an overt threat of any kind.
He said he would see to it that she got onto another flight without having to buy a second ticket.
I called Rachel to give her the good news. But a few minutes later she called me back, almost in tears.
The airline official at the departure gate was giving her a bad time: “If we have to choose between you and another passenger who has a ticket for this flight, he’ll go, not you.”
She laid out a series of other scenarios under which Rachel would remain stranded in Denver.
So once again I called the Chief of Airport Operations: “I just got a call from Rachel. She’s being hassled by an official at the gate. Can you please send someone over there and put a stop to this nonsense?”
A few minutes later, I got another call from Rachel–this one totally upbeat. She said that a man who identified himself only as an airport official–but wearing an expensive suit–had visited her at the gate.
When the ticket-taking airline official had protested, he had cut her off. The official had then walked Rachel and her baggage onto an otherwise fully-loaded 777 jet bound for San Francisco.
Soon she was en route to San Francisco for her urgent-care medical appointment the next day.
So if you’re having troubles with an airline:
- Start by calling the highest-ranking airline official you can reach.
- You may be able to find this out by punching the name of the airline in Google
- If the official isn’t available or sympathetic, call the airport.
- Be persistent–but businesslike.
- Don’t let yourself be bullied.
- If you can cite a legal violation by the airline and/or airport, don’t hesitate to do so.
- But don’t make overt threats: the official will get the message
- Don’t hesitate to play for sympathy: “This is a woman has an urgent-care doctor’s appointment….”
Then cross your fingers and hope for the best.
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
ABC NEWS, CBS NEWS, CNN, FACEBOOK, FBI, MEXICAN WAR, NBC NEWS, NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, POLICE, POLICE BRUTALITY, SANDRA BLAND, TEXAS RANGERS, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DISCOURSES, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE PRINCE, THE WASHINGTON POST, TWITTER, USA TODAY
SUIICIDE BY COP: PART FOUR (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Social commentary on July 31, 2015 at 12:10 amBy now, a second–and female–officer has arrived on the scene of the arrest of motorist Sandra Bland.
Bland: Make you feel real good for a female. Y’all strong, y’all real strong.
Encinia: I want you to wait right here.
Bland: I can’t go anywhere with your fucking knee in my back, duh!
Encinia: (to bystander): You need to leave! You need to leave!
(Bland continues screaming, but much of it is inaudible)
Encinia: For a warning you’re going to jail.
Bland: Whatever, whatever.
Encinia: You’re going to jail for resisting arrest. Stand up.
Bland: If I could, I can’t.
Encinia: OK, roll over.
Bland: I can’t even fucking feel my arms.
Encinia: Tuck your knee in, tuck your knee in.
Bland: (Crying): Goddamn. I can’t [muffled].
Encinia: Listen, listen. You’re going to sit up on your butt.
Bland: You just slammed my head into the ground and you do not even care …
[Bland has already told both officers that (1) she is an epileptic, and (2) Encinia slammed her head into the ground. Now she is again putting them on notice that she could have sustained a traumatic brain injury. But neither officer shows any concern.]
Sandra Bland’s jail booking photo
Encinia: Sit up on your butt.
Female officer: Listen to how he is telling you to get up.
Bland: I can’t even hear.
Female officer: Yes you can.
[After having her head slammed into the ground, Bland says she cannot hear. Both officers should consider that the injury to her head may be serious–and take her to an emergency room for evaluation.]
Encinia: Sit up on your butt.
Bland: He slammed my fucking head into the ground.
Encinia: Sit up on your butt.
Bland: What the hell.
Encinia: Now stand up.
Bland: All of this for a traffic signal. I swear to God. All of this for a traffic signal. (To bystander.) Thank you for recording! Thank you! For a traffic signal — slam me into the ground and everything! Everything! I hope y’all feel good.
Encinia: This officer saw everything.
Female officer: I saw everything.
[Since the female officer was not present when Encinia initially encountered Bland–as the video proves–she could not have “seen everything.” Her claiming to have done so could be seen as evidence that she intends to lie on Encinia’s behalf.]
Bland: And (mufled) no you didn’t. You didn’t see everything leading up to it.
Female Officer: I’m not talking to you.
Bland: You don’t have to.
[This is the last exchange between Bland and the officers as recorded on the dashcam video of Brian Encinia’s police cruiser.]
* * * * *
Born in 1987, Sandra Bland grew up in Illinois, and lived with her family in suburban Chicago.
She graduated Willowbrook High School in Villa Park, Illinois, where she ran track and played volleyball. She was also a varsity cheerleader and part of the marching band.
She then attended Prairie View A&M University outside Hempstead, Waller County, Texas. She graduated in 2009 with a degree in agriculture.
Bland returned to Illinois in 2009.
In January 2015, she began posting videos on Facebook about police brutality against blacks.
In early July she traveled to Waller County, Texas, to begin a job at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M.
In one of her last conversations with her mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, Bland said:
“Momma, now I know what my purpose is. My purpose is to go back to Texas. My purpose is to stop all social injustice in the South.”
On July 13–three days after her arrest on July 10–Bland was found dead in her cell in Waller County Jail in Hempstead, Texas.
Sandra Bland memorial
Police claimed that she had hanged herself, citing a video she posted in Facebook in March, where Bland stated she was depressed.
Cannon Lambert, an attorney for the Bland family, said that at the time of Bland’s death, her relatives were raising money for Bland’s $5,000 bail. And Bland knew it.
“We don’t understand this,” said Lambert. “It doesn’t make sense.”
The Texas Rangers and the FBI are still investigating Bland’s death.
The Harris County medical examiner conducted an autopsy and ruled her death a suicide, claiming that it found no evidence of a violent struggle.
One possibility: Bland came to Texas to “stop all social injustice in the South.” She may have grown fatally depressed at her inability to “save herself” from jail over a simple traffic violation.
Another possibility: Texas authorities may have indulged in a long-cherished Texas tradition, best explained by a 19th-century Texas Ranger named Samuel Reid.
Reid served as a Ranger scout during the Mexican War (1846-1848). Recalling his experiences south of the border, he wrote:
“Our orders were most strict not to molest any unarmed Mexican.
“And if some of the most notorious of these villians were found shot, or hung up in the chaparral…the [United States] government was charitably bound to suppose that, during a fit of remorse and desperation, tortured by conscience for the many evil deeds they had committed, they had recklessly laid violent hands upon their own lives! Quien sabe?”
Meanwhile, Brian Encinia has been placed on administrative duties after the state Department of Public Safety found “violations of procedures regarding traffic stops and the department’s courtesy policy.”
Share this: