Originally Posted by RichardKenner

And that's part of what I'm getting at. Although there are certainly cases where "forced" is indeed likely the right word, because of the above, there's also the potential of a request being interpreted as a demand. Or even a question being interpreted that way. It's not necessarily the case that the TSO and the passenger have the same interpretation of what was said.

If a TSO asks somebody in a wheelchair "Can you stand, sir?", in his mind, he's asking the question "Are you able to stand up?" but a passenger could easily misinterpret this as a demand to stand and views the TSO as trying to "force" a person in a wheelchair to stand. My guess is that at leaast some of the stories are cases exactly like this.

TSO, to passenger approaching the WTMD in a wheelchair: "Can you stand and walk through the metal detector?"

Passenger: "I'll try".

TSO: "If you can, that'll make things easier."

In such a situation, both parties could easily view the interaction in vastly different ways.