TSA Screener Cited "Torture" In Scanner Case

SEPTEMBER 14--The airport screener arrested for assaulting a coworker who taunted him about the size of his penis after his genitalia was exposed by a full-body scanner told police that he snapped after being subjected to “psychological torture” by fellow Transportation Security Administration employees who repeatedly asked him, “What size are you?”

In a handwritten statement given to cops following his May arrest, Rolando Negrin, 45, described the fallout after he walked through a high-tech "whole body image" scanner during a training session for TSA workers at Miami International Airport. Negrin’s statement to Miami-Dade Police Department officers, excerpted here, was obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request. The original police report detailing the incident can be found here.

Negrin wrote that, despite his pleas, coworkers would not cease mocking him after the scanner gave them a revealing look at his genitalia. He recalled that he was mockingly asked, “Roly, what size are you?” Coworkers, he added, called him “little angry man,” laughed off his pleas for compassion, and abused him in front of passengers.

The merciless teasing and “psychological torture,” Negrin stated, left him stressed out and with elevated blood pressure. When he confronted his chief tormentor, Negrin said the man laughed at him. Negrin, pictured in the above mug shot, later allegedly attacked fellow TSA screener Hugo Osorno in an airport parking lot, striking him with a police baton while demanding an apology.

According to court records, Negrin is scheduled for an October 25 trial hearing in Miami-Dade Circuit Court. Reached by phone this afternoon at his Hialeah Gardens home, Negrin declined to answer questions about the case. “I do not wish to talk to anyone about my issues,” he said.