Hate Crime at JFK Airport: When Airman Told Black TSA Screeners to Stop Cussing Their Heads Off and Saying, “Nigger,” One of Them Threw a Cup of Hot

Coffee on Him

“Scalding” Reply at JFK
By Philip Messing
April 4, 2012, 2:05 a.m.
New York Post

She should switch to decaf.

A TSA screener was arrested at JFK Airport for hurling a cup of hot coffee at an American Airlines pilot who told her and some colleagues to tone down a profanity- laced conversation in a terminal, sources said yesterday.

The dust-up occurred at about 5 a.m. on March 28, when airman Steven Trivett, 54, who was off-duty, was exiting Terminal 8 and overheard the banter, according to Port Authority police sources.

Trivett, of Butler, Tenn., told them they should “conduct themselves more professionally in uniform and not use profanity or the n-word,” a source explained.
One screener told him to “mind his own business” and cursed him out.

Trivett then identified himself as a “TSA officer” who is an armed pilot.

When he tried to grab at the ID tags of screener Lateisha El, 30, she pushed him and tossed a “full cup” of hot coffee on him, police say.

Trivett was not seriously injured. El, of Brooklyn’s East New York, was given a desk-appearance ticket on harassment and misdemeanor-assault charges.