People are jumping to the conclusion of his intent based on his last name. Islamaphobia maybe would be a better term.
Part of where I’m coming from is that I work with engineers named Ahmed, Mohamed, Syed, and more. I like these guys and it puts me off in a grand way to see this kind of ugly behavior. It’s not like we went all open loop on the Irish when Sinn Fein was (allegedly) cozied up with the IRA … Nor should we have.
50n40w
what is the basis for you making that statement?
do you have any proof the teacher, principle, police etc… did that? even a small sliver of evidence? I really really would love to see it.
maybe people jumping to his defense are doing it based on his name, but please provide evidence of the contrary. I am super interested.
if you have none just say in my opinion I think that it is xenophobia or whatever other reason you wish to apply. but I have yet to see any evidence. until shown otherwise you should preface that statement with noting it as your opinion.
Don’t speak for other people @50N40W or put words in their mouths that were never uttered. I couldn’t care less whether the person is black, white, blue or purple. And care even less what their religion is. The bottom line is that in order to keep our schools safe this type of incident has to be taken seriously. Perhaps he had no ill intent, but others might.
I am appreciative of the law enforcement officers who took the time to ascertain what his intent was.
"It’s part Luddite reaction, and part xenophobia, IMO. Plenty of bad grace to go around, particularly when those things are bundled together.
So yeah, I really don’t care where the kid is from, he’s got a cool lab, wears a NASA shirt, and kids pick on him because he’s smart. That he looks different is just another excuse for the ignorant."
Except, it sounds like you do care where he’s from, or that he looks different. And he looks the right kind of different to you, so therefore he deserves all the defense in the world, whether that ends up being correct or not. You gonna defend the white Christian kid who does the same thing as vigorously?
It’s pretty arrogant to assume that people are uncomfortable of these actions purely because he’s Muslim. I doubt that most of us even give a crap what race or religion he is. Hope other kids aren’t going to think they can slap some electronics together, call it a clock, phone, watch, television, or whatever, dress it up to look like a bomb, and bring it into school. Then maybe they too can visit the White House, get an internship offer, and invitations to campus. The new hook for college acceptances.
No one is arguing that the teacher or principal should ignore anything, that whole “well, if the ignored it, the school cold get blown up” is a strawman argument of the worst sort. No one is saying the school didn’t have a right to be concerned, or the teacher or principal were wrong to be concerned, what people are saying is the reaction to that concern was the problem, that even though they knew it wasn’t real, they treated the kid as if it were real, and it was clear from early on, prob before they called the cops, they knew it wasn’t real. If they talked to the engineering teacher, they knew it was not a bomb and could assume it wasn’t meant as a hoax, either.
In terms of how a 14 year old is treated by the law, there are two parts to this. When a juvenile is arrested, no matter the crime, the procedure is different than with adults 18 and over. As such, a 14 year old is assumed not to understand the miranda warnings, so they cannot be questioned without a parent present or a lawyer, that much I am certain of, so even if Joe Billy Bob, the local cop, gave him his miranda warnings, them talking to him for an hour and a half without a parent or lawyer there is illegal, period. They cannot even argue that they needed to talk to him because of a potential terrorist plot, because it is clear they knew it was not a bomb long before they arrested him, so that justification is bubkus…
Yes, a minor can be treated as an adult in court, but that can only come from a judge. When a minor is charged with a crime, usually a heinous one like rape or murder, a judge makes the determination if he/she can be tried as an adult, the cops and da cannot do that on their own, the DA requests it, the defense lawyers argue their case, and a judge decides. So a cop cannot decide to treat a minor like an adult when bringing them in and questioning them, they are to be treated as a minor, period.
It bothers me when I read things like “they were making an example of the student”, because an example of what? I am sure kids have violated school policy (and again, the written policy does not disallow electronics, there is very little in it that could be construed to mean this thing the kid built) and gotten suspensions and such, and if the school had suspended the kid and said it was because he did something stupid, let’s say a day’s suspension, I prob wouldn’t think it was a big deal (though again, this sounds like Dean Wormer with his 'double secret probation", saying the kid violated an unwritten school policy is arbitrary), but that they had him arrested when it was clear that he had no intentions of this being a bomb or a hoax, that he clearly said it was a clock he made. If they had evidence the kid planned on it being a hoax, he told someone that it was meant to be a hoax, then maybe, just maybe it would be okay, but there is no such proof, and it is pretty obvious to me that the cops and school did this because the kid was muslim and in their minds, muslim=terrorist, so therefore you have to ‘let them know who is the boss’ and so forth. There is a long history of that in this country, a black kid gets busted for pot, sent to jail, white kid, slap on the wrist, and so forth, and it is true in this case as well.
And comparing this to a 5 year old with a weapon shaped pop tart or whatnot is idiotic, it is two entirely different things, with the pop tart thing as idiotic as the way the rule was enforced, it is a written rule, and the 5 year old was not arrested or sent to apsychiatrist or whatnot.
@musicprnt are you saying that the school should not have contacted the police?
musicprint “And comparing this to a 5 year old with a weapon shaped pop tart or whatnot is idiotic, it is two entirely different things, with the pop tart thing as idiotic as the way the rule was enforced, it is a written rule, and the 5 year old was not arrested or sent to apsychiatrist or whatnot.”
oooo it was written rule, that makes it ok?
and he was kicked out, for a pop tart not bringing a thing to school that could have been a bomb as a teenager. the 14 year old was a legitimate situation the pop tart is over the top. and social workers were brought in for the pop tart kids class. that is absurd.
and the 5 year old pop tart kid should get an invite to the white house.
HarvestMoon1: If they figured out that the ‘bomb’ was not a bomb, and if they had the engineering teacher telling them the kid brought it to show him, then yes, I question calling the cops, what was the point? If they knew it wasn’t a bomb (if I remember the timeline, they called the cops later in the day, when it was obvious it wasn’t a bomb), then why did they call the cops? If they were calling the cops because they thought it was a deliberate hoax, why did they think that, if the first teacher told them the kid brought it to show him, which would indicate it wasn’t a hoax.
If they had called the cops the moment the bomb was discovered, if they had evacuated the school, then I would agree they acted the way they should. But they didn’t evacuate the school when the ‘bomb’ was discovered, they didn’t call the cops right away, so what was prudent about what they did? You keep talking about sending a message, to whom? To all those little muslim jihadis out there who are out to inflict Shariah law on us? The problem with this as a deterrent is that there doesn’t seem to be anything to be a deterrent for…stupidity? Not realizing how something would be taken? It is apparent they knew it wasn’t a bomb, so it wasn’t a deterrent to potential bomb makers, and given what the first teacher knew and presumably told them before the cops were called, there was absolutely no basis that this was meant to be a bomb hoax, zero, none, they knew it wasn’t a hoax, so how was Texas’ ‘hoax bomb laws’ violated, when they knew the boy’s intent? To me, the only message being sent here is “if you are muslim, and do something stupid, we’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks”. It will be interesting if this ever goes to court, because any attorney worth his/her salt will ask for the disciplinary records of the school, to see how similar violations (if this is even one, me I would ask for summary judgement, pointing out that the school policy had nothing in it banning electronic devices or clocks) were treated, and if for example, some kid came into school with a gun and they gave him a suspension and didn’t call the cops, they would lose, big time. If their records indicated that the way they treated this boy was different than similar violations of policy, then they don’t have a leg to stand on, the ACLU for one will be able to shred them to pieces if this is true.
Someone else wrote "
oooo it was written rule, that makes it ok?"
It doesn’t make the rule okay (talking about the kid with the gun shaped pop tart), nor does it make how they treated the kid right. However, one of the big differences is that with the kid in Texas, there was no written policy that could be covered by this, there was absolutely nothing in the code of conduct that could be reasonable assumed to cover a home made clock device, and one of the things about policies and such if they aren’t written, they are worthless, period, for the obvious reason you cannot say “the kid should have known a clock was a violation” if it isn’t written down. Oral law is worth about as much as Oral contracts, actually less,because oral law is arbitrary and capricious by nature.
Police enforce laws not school board policy
And a bomb or a hoax bomb would fall under the law.
If the police were called for a school board policy they would not involve themselves. This was a public safety issue not a rule like kids need to wear long pants.
The cops might enforce laws, but the school didn’t have to call the cops, and in this case it was pretty clear it wasn’t meant as a hoax long before the cops were called. The principal called the cops, the cops heard the story, and yet they still arrested the kid. The Texas law on hoax bombs more than likely makes it a crime to intentionally perpetuate a hoax, the key word is intent. The law differentiates between what people perceive and intent, and in this case the cops arrested him when they knew there was no intent. This is no different than a cop arresting a woman who was wearing a skimpy outfit in an area known for prostitution simply because she was in the area, you cannot arrest someone for suspicion of a crime or without reason, and in the case of this kid with the bomb, the first teacher knew the kids intent and presumably told the cops that, so why was he arrested, if the intent wasn’t there?
And the proof is in the pudding, the charges were dropped, which means the DA took one look at it and knew the cops overreacted, that they didn’t have a case, and the fact that they were dropped that quickly says they wouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole. I hope the kids parents sue the school and the police department, and I hope the cops involved and the principal are given liability, it is clear to me they didn’t act out of public safety, it sounds to me like they did this because the kid was Muslim, they overstepped their bounds, big time, the chain of evidence proves that, it shows they knew it wasn’t a bomb early on, it also shows they had every reason to believe the kid brought the thing, not as a hoax, but to show a teacher, they had plenty of time before he was arrested to know this, but they still went ahead and busted him, and they were dead wrong.
The DA was not touching this hot potato…make no mistake when Obama and others chimed in and did what he did the DA said I don’t care what happened I’m done.
So the action of the prosecutors office in this case shows at most prosecutorial discretion
The attempts on this thread to fabricate a counterfactual narrative retrosopectively justifying the school and police behavior are strenuous! Unfortunately for all of you engaged in such tortured efforts, you can’t get around the undeniable fact that nobody ever suspected for one second that it was an actual bomb, because the school wasn’t evacuated – as it would have been at even a hint of suspicion. And if you think they were justified in suspecting that it was a hoax, the only basis for such suspicion was not the child’s words (he was open and consistent in saying that it was a clock), but his name and, therefore, his religion. As demonstrated by his account of the way he was interrogated by the police.
So yes, it was completely unjustifiable that the school called the police, and that the police then detained him, in the absence of any genuine suspicion that there was something “dangerous” about this pencil-box sized “device.” (The attempts to justify what happened by pointing to the “suitcase” shape – and deliberately failing to mention the clock’s size – have been hilarious.)
Zobroward, your attempt to cast this as a public safety issue is frivolous, and your attempt to whip up suspicion that this was all part of a plot by his father is far worse than frivolous.
Furthermore, the suggestions that this was the best thing that ever happened to him are shameful. Are you telling me that if it was your 14-year old child, you would accept his being publicly handcuffed and arrested and interrogated by the police in hostile fashion without an adult being present (something that’s certainly illegal in New York, but God knows about Texas), in exchange for some supportive publicity including tweets and invitations from the President and Mark Zuckerberg? If your answer is yes, I think there’s something very wrong with you. Because I would never make that trade in a million years.
And I agree with musicprnt: I hope there’s a civil rights lawsuit that causes a whole lot of financial pain to that school, including an award of attorneys’ fees.
This has moved so far into the ludicrous it’s no longer a reasonable discussion of the issues. It gives us an opportunity to examine how kids of color are treated in schools, by the police, how far we will go in the name of security. But not if we are willfully blind.
When I first heard about this I had some sympathy for the school, assuming they were acting out of genuine (if perhaps racially biased) concern and caution, but as more and more came out it was clear how misguided (or worse) this was.
Evidence? Title of the thread, the officer in back saying “that’s who I thought it was”, people bringing his father into it, repeated questions about whether a Smith or Jones would have been similarly jacked up …
And there’s the big unanswered question … who talked to the science teacher besides the student?
People blowing up other people and places is not specific to any particular ethnicity or religion @musicprnt. Eric Rudolph, Timothy McVeigh. Ted Kaczynski, John Gilbert and Thomas Doty all come to mind. So your next sentence is really not worth responding to since it is not me that continues to focus on this boys religion and ethnicity. It has nothing to do with it in my mind.
Our school’s have become a target. People who are mentally ill or looking to avenge some perceived societal slight are harming our children. I believe diligence and extreme caution should be exercised when dealing with anything that might be perceived as a threat to that safety. When the safety of children are concerned, I am really not at all interested in what the “assumptions” might be by one engineering teacher. The matter needs to be looked into by trained professionals.
You say “the school didn’t have to call the cops.” Well neither you nor I get to make that decison. I am sure the school followed whatever procedures they had in place under the circumstances. It was not the school that had the boy arrested, it was law enforcement officers that made that decision. Why are we mocking and second guessing the decision to investigate this thoroughly?
Because anyone with any understanding of science could see there was no explosive…
Btw, an engineering teacher is a professional * and perfectly able to check that a 14 year old has put together a non dangerous item. At no point has the school claimed they thought it was dangerous. They didn’t evacuate the school, they didn’t call the bomb squad, the principal got the device during second period and called the kid sixth period. The question has NEVER been “is this a bomb?”
- small town police aren't Quantico trained. Their science background is high school level. Furthermore, if you've checked the content of the criminal justice major, you'll certainly feel safer knowing someone with an engineering degree was used to decide on the purpose of a scientific object, rather than a local officer.
Reading this thread, it’s occurred to me there seem to be two types of high schools: those where kids are encouraged to tinker, experiment, so robotics and electronics are a given. And those where robotics and electronics are suspicious and/or scary. Depending on which kind of high school you’re used to, your reading of “kid makes clock, brings it to impress teacher, gets handcuffed and arrested” will be on opposite ends of the spectrum.
At one end you have “luddites, possibly racist, take on geek kid”; on the other hand you have “kid bring suspicious item, pretends it’s to impress teacher but really must mean trouble, because why else would bring something scary to school?”
Oh, btw, for parents with future engineers “that clock is part of my future” makes total sense= First step to FIRSTRobotics.
Not sure how else people understand it but I’ve seen it cited as a proof of something nefarious and I don’t understand what’s wrong with that statement.
HarvestMoon, you can’t get around the fact that that there was no perceived threat to safety. Your entire argument is based on a premise that’s not only false but illogical: you have to simultaneously insist that the school and police acted reasonably in their treatment of the student in the face of a perceived threat, and acknowledge that in the face of said perceived threat, they acted completely irrationally and unreasonably by failing to evacuate the school, call the bomb squad, etc. You can’t reconcile the two. What good does it do to put the kid in handcuffs if you think the school might be about to blow up? Please.
My point as I expressed upthread is that the boy was not arrested because there was any immediate perceived threat. He was arrested because there is a statute in Texas prohibiting “hoax” bombs that could cause alarm. The boy was arrested so he could be questioned as to what his intent was in bringing the bomb to school.
The boy was a new freshman - at the school for about 4 weeks. What do the teachers really know about any child they have interacted with for 4 weeks? Nobody at that school could conclude with any certainty what the motive was without proper questioning of the student. I have no problem whatsoever with the police being notified to conduct that questioning.
I’m just having a flashback to my D and classmate making a Van de Graff machine at home and bringing it into school. It was an assignment!
She built a catapult the year before. No harm done.