@dfdbfb:
I don’t have any statistics on this kind of thing, but you would have to assume that if the police and other authorities get a lot of false alarms, that the natural tendency would be to perhaps not investigate as thoroughly something that might be real.I can tell you from friends of mine who are cops, that they tend to get a lot of calls from older people whose chief mode of fun seems to be looking out the window and reporting tons of ‘suspicious’ things (and this, mind you, is in suburban areas where squirrels are often the chief criminals), and I can tell you that while they will check things out, they also may not necessarily treat all such messages as high priority, so that is a negative factor, in a sea of garbage feedback finding the truth.
Could people be deterred from reporting suspicious things, for example a neighbor doing something they think is off, for fear of being branded racist or whatnot? Sure, they could be, and I can understand that reluctance, but I also think people have to ask themselves if what they are seeing is truly suspicious? If you see a young black kid walking down the street listening to music, are you suspicious because there are so few black folks living in your area, you assume he is there for no good? If a muslim family has a party to celebrate Eid (the end of Ramadan), is that a terrorist gathering or people having a good time? Put it this way, working in NYC, you are bombarded with messages about that, but when I am riding the subway or walking down the street, I don’t see a bomb threat in every corner, but I suspect if something was truly weird, like for example a car or truck parked in the middle of times square where no cars or trucks should be parked that isn’t disabled (person standing by it, flashers going), I would call it in. There is a little thing called judgement, and while I won’t use the term common sense, if you see something suspicious it doesn’t hurt to ask why you think it is suspicious and work from there. The problem with the woman on the plane is she reacted without thinking, and it was doubly bad 1)she confused math with arabic and 2)the idea that writing arabic in of itself is suspicious…