Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Reading a bit more on the subject, he was not detained by police for bringing a bomb to school but for a "Hoax bomb". So any device that is made to look like it could be a bomb.
The qualifications under the Texas "hoax bomb" statute don't apply:
§ 46.08 : Texas Statutes - Section 46.08 wrote:
(a) A person commits an offense if the person knowingly manufactures, sells, purchases, transports, or possesses a hoax bomb with intent to use the hoax bomb to:
(1) make another believe that the hoax bomb is an explosive or incendiary device; or
(2) cause alarm or reaction of any type by an official of a public safety agency or volunteer agency organized to deal with emergencies.
(b) An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor.
Ahmed did not present the item as a bomb, repeatedly told people that it was a clock, his engineering teacher knew that it was a clock and the da
mn thing doesn't have any sort of explosive (or fake explosive) within it.
That's great. Not the point though. He wasn't actually charged with the crime, but surely you can comprehend that there must be some period of time in which you're determining whether a crime has been committed, where you detain the person in question until you decide to either charge him or not. And that's what happened. Police do not have the same criteria to arrest you for a crime as a DA has to charge you with it. Kinda has to be that way, otherwise the system doesn't work.
The police can't read his mind. He can say "It's just a clock" all day long, but that's probably exactly what a kid who was intending to plant a fake bomb would say if he was caught with it in his backpack too, right? The police have to act as though the intention was for people to believe this was a bomb, otherwise, they'd never actually be allowed to arrest anyone under this statute. I'll also point out that he was "caught" because the device started beeping while in the classroom. Assuming the plug in the picture is not just decorative, this means that he
plugged it into a wall socket while in class.
He may not have meant for anyone to be alarmed by what he did, but his actions certainly were alarming to anyone not capable of reading his mind. Which, btw, is exactly why we have rules against this sort of thing.
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In that it's in a case, I guess. A pencil case, by the way, not a suitcase -- using the plug in the photo for scale, it's probably 4"x6"x1" or so. Maybe it's a GI Joe suitcase bomb? Any half-intelligent person would probably also question "Hey, where's the stuff that's supposed to make the earth-shattering kaboom?" but I suppose those types are in short supply around Breitbart.
Again, that's not the point. Most people aren't going to take the time to examine the device and see if it's got explosives in it. They're going to take one look at it, think "that looks like a bomb", and react accordingly. The fact that they didn't immediately evacuate the school and call the bomb squad means that the teachers did believe him when he said that it wasn't a bomb. Still, it violates the rules of conduct for the school. I'm the first to say that zero tolerance laws overreact, but you can't blame the school staff for following them. They have no choice in the matter. That's why they're called "zero tolerance". They are designed (wrongly or not) to not allow staff discretion in these instances.
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It's also safe to assume that everyone knew it wasn't a bomb given that everyone's response was to stand around it for several hours rather than, you know, maybe trying to be someplace the "bomb" isn't. So why were the police contacted in the first place?
Um... Because, as I explained above, they have no choice. They are required to call the police for a violation like this. The police are required to arrest the student. Etc, etc, etc. Blame the way the laws are written if you want, but as that article (and heck, several threads on this forum) bears out, these sorts of things happen all the time. My primary issue isn't to defend the law, but to argue against the concept that he was treated differently because of his ethnicity and/or religion. He wasn't. Anyone else does the same thing, they get the same outcome. At the risk of repeating myself (again), this is part of the reason for the zero tolerance laws. It's to eliminate the possibility of students being treated differently based on anything other than their actions. Everyone is subject to the same rules. Which means that yes, occasionally a good kid gets caught up in something like this, and we all say "that's an overreaction".
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Also, he didn't "build a clock" or "invent a clock". He took an existing clock apart, attached the parts to different areas within the case, and then wired them together.
Huh? You're basing this off what? If he took apart an existing clock, he must have taken apart the sh
ittiest clock available for sale that requires multiple separate circuit boards to keep time. This isn't saying that he didn't use any clock components, but that's different from just taking a clock as a whole and putting it in a different case. [Edit: Some sites point out common clock components but, again, there seems to be differences of opinion about if it was a DIY kit, created from stock components, etc]
Ok. Found the page
with that info (also on breitbart, probably because this page has a link to the page with the picture). This is the bit I was referring to:
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The Dallas Morning News described it as a circuit board and a power supply wired to a digital display, all strapped inside a case with a tiger hologram on the front. Apparently, Mohamed created it from a digital clock he took apart and rearranged in what the Dallas print news outlet described as a “circuit-stuffed pencil case.â€
When Mohamed plugged the clock it into an electrical outlet during his English period, it started to beep in the middle of class. The teen showed his invention to the teacher but she reacted with confiscating the clock. “She was like, it looks like a bomb,†Mohamed told the newspaper.
The police rationale is mentioned a bit later in the article. Point being that there's a bit more to this than the side we've been hearing in most of the media. He made some really dumb decisions that day. Honestly, the other dumb decision was the science teacher he originally showed it to not taking it and keeping it until the end of the school day. Just telling him to keep it hidden was wrong because it created the situation in question. Of course, Ahmed obviously didn't do as that teacher told him either. Dumbness all around.
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I'll repeat my earlier assertion that our response to this really ought to be "that as an incredibly dumb thing to do".
Another fair assertion would be "Man, Gbaji really will just repeat anything he reads on a conservative blog without spending any moments of independent thought".
I had the same opinion immediately after reading the first article on this. I read around various other sites for more detail, is all. That some of those details happened to be on a conservative blog may speak more to the desire of non-conservative sources to create and maintain an identity/victim narrative on this than that the conservative source is being misleading somehow. I do find it interesting that everyone leaped immediately to the "OMG! They profiled him as a Muslim", and failed to get that this is the same reaction any kid would have gotten. And now that some people (like myself) are daring to point out that very basic fact, it's like circle the wagons time.
Kids get arrested and suspended for far less in our schools. They don't get invites to the White House. You honestly don't see the political angle angle going on here?
Edited, Sep 17th 2015 6:51pm by gbaji 
