Fourteen Year Old Student Arrested For Bringing Homemade Clock to School

[pjm0925]

It's encouraging public safety. Do you believe it's okay to yell "fire" in an enclosed public space such as a theatre? Even if there's no fire (or in this case, no bomb), you create a very real sense of threat. 

 

Even though this boy is obviously talented and smart, that doesn't mean you bring fishy devices (sorry not everyone can recognize a circuit, we're not all LTT nerds) to a school which can be a common spot for public harm.

I would say what they did to him was akin to shouting fire in a public space.  This wasn't about public safety, it's an extension of the culture of fear some seem to want to promote.

[TroubleKlef]

I would say what they did to him was akin to shouting fire in a public space.  This wasn't about public safety, it's an extension of the culture of fear some seem to want to promote.

 

How is it akin to shouting fire? It's more like reprimanding (albeit a bit harshly I'm not arguing that) an individual for the safety of many. It's nothing like that. It's much easier to apologize to someone who is alive than to someone who is dead.

[pjm0925]

How is it akin to shouting fire? It's more like reprimanding (albeit a bit harshly I'm not arguing that) an individual for the safety of many. It's nothing like that. It's much easier to apologize to someone who is alive than to someone who is dead.

 

Because it is creating a situation of fear where none should exist. 

[TroubleKlef]

Because it is creating a situation of fear where none should exist. 

 

Are you fearful right now? I hope not. The situation was defused (too early?) and the threat of a bomb was disposed of. Ahmed is now even being reached out to from the White House and various tech companies. This all happened because the school, whose arguably #1 obligation is not education but student safety was followed.

[pjm0925]

Are you fearful right now? I hope not. The situation was defused (too early?) and the threat of a bomb was disposed of. Ahmed is now even being reached out to from the White House and various tech companies. This all happened because the school, whose arguably #1 obligation is not education but student safety was followed.

I'm fearful of what those who want to instill fear in our society are doing.  I'm not fearful of brown kids with electronics who like to make stuff, but it sure seems like some people are.  

[dom1310df]

He's wearing a shirt with the nasa logo on it. I have rarely been more disappointed in my country.

I should note, he was released from custody after a few hours.

Isn't he still suspended, though?

[bcredeur97]

I would feel sympathy for him if he had made it look a bit less sketchy... Just knowing how paranoid the world is these days, you just have to be more careful and go for a clean design..

[iamdarkyoshi]

I just realized that the amp/battery pack on my homemade portable speaker looks kinda sketchy

[rtpb5642]

I don't think every Muslim is complaining? Maybe you should shut the fuck up

 

I never said every muslim was. Im just saying we have a much too open immigration policy. Welfare system people use to jack off with. 

[xXChaoticSymphonyXx]

People who is butthurt of this needs to shut up. better safe than sorry. imagine if you had a kid in school, wouldnt you be happy that people actually cares and check. 

 

Awsome job police!

"Better safe than sorry" ... That could apply only if they had actually taken it seriously to begin with and evacuated the school. They either knew it wasn't a bomb or dangerous and continued to improperly handle the situation by traumatizing the kid OR they really considered it a threat AND still managed to screw it up by leaving school staff and students at risk. 

[IP man]

"Better safe than sorry" ... That could apply only if they had actually taken it seriously to begin with and evacuated the school. They either knew it wasn't a bomb or dangerous and continued to improperly handle the situation by traumatizing the kid OR they really considered it a threat AND still managed to screw it up by leaving school staff and students at risk. 

they didnt take it seriously? ok. and traumtizing? where did that come from? again, better safe than sorry.

[pk-man]

there's really no defending what the school and the police did to the kid. If you do, you are just as ignorant as they are.  They did not follow proper protocol AND they arrested a kid WITHOUT actually verifying said "threat".  Their assumptions were based on his race and religion.

[LAwLz]

there's really no defending what the school and the police did to the kid. If you do, you are just as ignorant as they are.  They did not follow proper protocol AND they arrested a kid WITHOUT actually verifying said "threat".  Their assumptions were based on his race and religion.

No the assumptions were NOT based on race and religion because the same bullshit has happened to other races and religions before (including white people).

I didn't hear anyone scream that it was racism against white people when that poor 7 year old got kicked out of school for having a pop tart shaped like a gun, so I don't see any reason why this should be called racism either.

 

It's idiocy, not racism.

[xXChaoticSymphonyXx]

I could try and break it down into something even simpler to understand, but I'm going to play it "better safe than sorry" here because it's obvious some family gene pools are growing algae. I'm out.

[CTR640]

Lel, did the 14 years old teenager made a clock like this one to get arrested?:

 

[babadoctor]

That's like me, aged 16, getting arrested for bringing HEAPS of home-made appliances that were actual HOMEWORK.

 

It's a clock, for Pete sake, not a nucular warhead.

 

CLOCKS ARE NOT EVIL <__<

according to the us school system they are

[hph6203]

1. Teachers have an obligation to protect their students, if they perceive something as a threat then they have to report it. If the teacher thought his clock looked like a bomb, fake or real, then they should notify the principal of the school.

2. If the principal does not feel comfortable in making the call on whether or not the device is a bimb, then it goes to the police to determine.

3. Once the police determine that it's not a bomb, and the kid never claims it was a bomb they should have asked him to leave for the day and take his clock home and return the next day. If it looks enough like a bomb that a teacher and principal both don't feel comfortable in completely writing it off, then it doesn't belong at school.

To my eye, it looks like a fake ass movie bomb, but the kid shouldn't have been arrested and was arrested because of his name and the color of his skin.

To those of you who say things like "Look, he's wearing a NASA shirt!" How is that even relevant?

Things are rarely 100% right, or 100% wrong. The kid was not smart to bring something that looked like that to school, but the manner in which this kid was treated by the police department blows that mistake out of the water.

[Rune]

Isn't he still suspended, though?

Yes. The school still suspended him, so he just switched schools.

[Thony]

Interesting.

[MattGameDev]

...And? If I think someone is pointing a knife at me I'm not going to disregard it because his shirt says #JesusFreak

 

Please educate yourself. This forum has way more respect then to have idiots such as yourself trolling around for some sort of sport.

[Nowak]

For those of you who want to know what Ahmed received in just one day of the news breaking out:

 

• An invitation to the White House Astronomy Night
• Lifetime membership in the Dallas electronics club
• Scholarship to NASA Marshall Space Camp
• A MIT CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab) tour
• Offer to visit Facebook and meet founder Mark Zuckerberg
• Offer to visit telescope lab at UT Austin
• Offer to visit General Electric headquarters
• A space-flown NASA shirt from astronaut Daniel Tani

All this just for being the center of national news for a day.

[unijab]

So now you can't even bring things you make to school...

Terrorism has won.

Agreed

[FPS with a Wacom Tablet]

Hmm, makes me wonder how clocks are dangerous? I mean bombs are purpose-built by design (even IEDs have a bit of intentional design, if any) but quite clearly the boy knows it wasn't built that way, with proof from the prof.

 

Also bombs are relatively easy and cheap to make. Ammonium nitrate and diesel make for quite a powerful explosive medium; provided that the primer is the only challenge (unless electrically primed, then no problem).

 

If you question my info, I have a colleague who worked as an explosives engineer in a mining company. They're the ones blowing up stuff non-stop, for good reason.

[totjup5]

Yes, lets shun the kid who is smarter than his peers....

[Takata]

For those of you who want to know what Ahmed received in just one day of the news breaking out:

 

• An invitation to the White House Astronomy Night
• Lifetime membership in the Dallas electronics club
• Scholarship to NASA Marshall Space Camp
• A MIT CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab) tour
• Offer to visit Facebook and meet founder Mark Zuckerberg
• Offer to visit telescope lab at UT Austin
• Offer to visit General Electric headquarters
• A space-flown NASA shirt from astronaut Daniel Tani

All this just for being the center of national news for a day.

Hey, he also sounds like a really good electronics engineer for his age if he put this together in just a few hours. The treatment also seeks to outweigh the impression that he, and people like him, might have gotten that says they shouldn't build these sorts of things, or they shouldn't show them to their peers, since they might be suspected (on some level) of terrorism. Sure, he got released after a few hours, but getting arrested, even just for a few hours, is something to be avoided.