14-year-old Texas boy arrested for bringing homemade clock

[Sam]

High art:

Image 1442503300-001.jpg


On the merits, I'd like school officials using reasonable caution. The problem was everything past the point of calling down the engineering teacher and the possible (probable?) profiling.

[KingsGambit]

Never said anything about being exempt from security. However, with a disabled person frisking can them cause a lot of harm. It took me days to recover from that. We had a doctors note and everything explicitly telling them not to touch me. There are other options. They have all kinds of devices for scanning, they don't need to pat someone down when it's going to likely injure them.

Ok, thanks for the clarification.

[Cow Poke]

No, I never said anything about the bulk of the reaction. I do think airport security should exist though.

I just think we do it really stupidly.

[KingsGambit]

I just think we do it really stupidly.

No argument there.

[Darth Ovious]

The concern was, what was this thing built for? Do we take him into custody?" Irving police spokesman James McLellan told the Dallas Morning News.

To tell the time. It's a clock.

[One Bad Pig]

Do you bet 900 kids lives on your ability to spot a suicide bomber's behavior or whether or not a kid might somehow get access to a plastic explosive in the age of the Internet, or do you question the device?

The over reaction occurs not when they question the device but when they refuse to use any sense applying the resources they have available and fail to address the kid's answers.

Sure.

[whag]

No, my point was that yours is a red herring.

Common sense didn't show up at that school that day.

I was responding to Mountain Man saying the school was justified BECAUSE THE KID WAS MUSLIM. No Muslim kids in the US have blown up schools but many white kids have shot them up. To assume Muslim kids have a talent for bomb making is idiotic.

[Jaecp]

Yeah, T, did you skim over MM's post (I wouldn't blame you)?

It was the most hideous thing said in this thread

[Littlejoe]

Do you bet 900 kids lives on your ability to spot a suicide bomber's behavior or whether or not a kid might somehow get access to a plastic explosive in the age of the Internet, or do you question the device?

The over reaction occurs not when they question the device but when they refuse to use any sense applying the resources they have available and fail to address the kid's answers.

Sure.

Wrong question. Do you trust YOUR OWN children's lives on the ability of some teacher (one you don't even know) to spot a suicide bomber's behavior or whether some kid might somehow get access to enough gunpowder (remember we're in Texas) to make if not a deadly, a severally damaging pipe bomb?

[Jaecp]

When's the last time a school teacher in the US has had one of those to deal with?

We can't be afraid of everything all the time

[Sea of red]

Wrong question. Do you trust YOUR OWN children's lives on the ability of some teacher (one you don't even know) to spot a suicide bomber's behavior or whether some kid might somehow get access to enough gunpowder (remember we're in Texas) to make if not a deadly, a severally damaging pipe bomb?

No, I wouldn't. You can't spot a suicide bomber - whether you like it or not. It's a sad state of paranoia in America when a teacher thinks a clock is a bomb, a principle thinks a clock is a bomb, and several cops thought a clock was a bomb. Does everybody here not know how a bomb functions? People need to get a grip and stop justifying their ignorance based paranoia on 9/11.

[seanD]

It's ironic that the white house is expressing empathy for the situation when they've been the main source propagating all this fear to the public.

[KingsGambit]

Then never use a computer or especially a Rasberry Pi circuit board, after all it has wires that connect to each other, right?

I can honestly say I've never heard of a Raspberry Pi circuit board.

[Sea of red]

Without using Google, tell me the visual difference between a syphilitic palmer-plantar rash and a non-syphilitic rash. Can't? Why it's obvious - there isn't one on visual inspection.

Not everyone is an expert in everything - and it's grossly unfair to expect them to be. Not knowing what the innards of your computer look like doesn't make you stupid - it just makes you disinterested in electronics. Telling teachers they have to correctly identify every device that they don't recognize is foolish. The teacher was correct to question it. The problem occurs when no one seems to have enough sense to get the one teacher that should have been called to see what the thing was.

That there wasn't any dynamite strapped to it really doesn't eliminate the possibility of plastic explosives. That the teacher didn't know it wasn't dangerous doesn't make them reactionary - that it escalated to calling the cops when more rational means were available does.

The student was at fault only in bringing the thing, which is a minor fault (lack of foresight) and hauling it around after being told it wasn't a good idea to have it at school. Neither is malicious nor particularly stupid and neither deserved punishment of any sort.

The engineering teacher probably could have done a better job by offering to keep it for the student until time to leave or telling him to put it in his locker (eh, I like the first better) but hindsight is twenty-twenty.

Innocent until proven guilty, Teal. Accusing somebody of having a bomb when you don't know the first thing about one is never justified. One doesn't have to be an expert to know the difference between a circuit board hooked into a display panel, and an actual explosive device.

[KingsGambit]

Innocent until proven guilty, Teal. Accusing somebody of having a bomb when you don't know the first thing about one is never justified. One doesn't have to be an expert to know the difference between a circuit board hooked into a display panel, and an actual explosive device.

Right, and that's what went wrong here. They didn't ask him what he had. They just came in and said "so you have a bomb."