Has anyone actually run any studies to determine whether this sort of overreporting, and thus false positives, by untrained individuals actually does lead to an increased chance of true positives?
One might logically expect that, but untrained individuals wouldn’t necessarily know what one should really look for, and thus be ignoring the stuff that would lead to true positives.
@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…
We are very grateful that we have great neighbor’s who called the cops and got a prompt response when someone broke into our car and a few others a few months ago.
Calls by our neighbor’s tend to be taken seriously, as it’s a pretty stable neighborhood where most folks know one another but we do have some burglaries. They even apprehended the burglar when he foolishly tried to use a CCard he stole in a car at 7-11, which automatically videotaped everyone entering its store, and especially folks using CCards. He was charged and I believe convicted.
“Maybe he was caught doing Al Gebra”
Or may be the suspicious seatmate misheard him mumble something about “deploying methods of math instruction.”
THere’s a huge difference though: you see someone doing something potentially harmful that requires immediate action versus WRITING. How can writing be considered suspicious or dangerous? I mean, even if he was writing a formula to bomb something, how was that sufficient to stop the plane? It’s not like the formula on the paper would combust and firebomb the plane…
yeah, writing,there is an immediate threat…lol…even if he had been writing arabic, what did she think he was writing, a suicide note? Hate to tell her, but suicide bombers tend to leave video statements, they don’t write a suicide note that duh would likely get blown up with the plane
“I read the police beat in our local newspaper for laughs. I can’t tell you how many times someone calls the police to report a suspicious looking person”
You should read campus security logs of women’s colleges. You’ll frequently see reports of calls on “suspicious looking male” even when through a consortium or a joint enrollment program there are men on campus, let alone male visitors for legit reasons like family members, boyfriends or friends. 
I say call if you notice something truly suspicious. The experts should know how to sort it out, separate problems from something innocent, etc., without shooting people or sending Italian geniuses off the plane.
A friend of mine was returning home late one night and smelled something funny. He didn’t call anyone. Five apartments in two buildings burned down an hour later and 3 pets were lost. He felt terrible but it hadn’t smelled like smoke to him and was probably wiring that was overheating. A firefighter would have recognized that smell.
Unfortunately, our experts usually need better training. But I feel worse about the San Bernadino killings and how they might have been prevented.
I may be naive, but it seems a flight attendant or pilot could have Googled the man, seen his profession, and left it at that.
My g/f lived next to an apartment with 4 Arabic men, who were part of the 9/11 pilots. After the attack, she was interviewed by the FBI. She had been suspicious of this group for months, but never said anything. She felt so bad afterwards.
So report, and hope that those people have some common sense.
It’s not the flight crew’s responsibility nor authority to do background investigations of their passengers. Do you really want a flight crew to rely in the internet for accurate info? Look at all the crazy people who post on CC.
The airline handled it correctly. They took the woman off for questioning. When finding what a ditz she is, they didn’t reboard her. And the poor pilot had the unenviable task of apologizing to the suspected passenger.
I always tell my son, “it’s not math if there are letters in it”, so maybe this lady was onto something! lol.
It all sounds silly, but they always tell us to say something…and she did try to vet it herself. I’m sure she is very embarrassed.
I think the lady was a nitwit, but I’m not sure anybody else was. Once you have a “say something” regime in place, you have to act when somebody says something. In this case, the woman wrote a note that said she was sick, and then when she got off the plane, she revealed that she thought her seatmate was acting suspiciously. I suspect that at that point, no matter how she describes (or fails to describe) the suspicious behavior, no airline employee is going to simply disregard it. They will have to do at least what they did, which is interview the supposedly suspicious individual. Most likely, the big delay was because somebody with enough authority to decide that nothing suspicious was going on had to be summoned.
In other words, I suspect something similar would have happened if she had just said, “I don’t know, there’s something off about him–I think he’s suspicious” with no further details at all. To this extent, the terrorists have already won, but I’m not sure what can be done about it.