Ahmed Mohamed, 14yr old arrested over clock mistaken for bomb

[Quincy Egg]

Originally Posted by Baron von Kriterium

It's not a briefcase; it's a little, lockable pencil box. Comme ca:

http://i5.walmartimages.com/dfw/dce0...caeb3d3.v1.jpg

Why does the size matter? And by the way, it wasn't exactly "little." Explosives can still be placed inside of something that size.

[Quincy Egg]

Originally Posted by Iggy City

Is a briefcase the universal symbol of a bomb? Maybe that's all he had lying around or could use.

It is when it contains a digital display that resembles a timer.

[nik-]

haha QuincyEgg successfully strikes again.

[FlamesAddiction]

I have to admit, it looks a little odd to me. Not arrest worthy, but definitely worth pulling aside and questioning.

I was pulled aside and questioned privately at the Prince Rupert airport before because I had a jack-in-the-box in my bag. Maybe had my name been Ahmed, I would have been arrested I guess... I don't know. I don't blame them for thinking the thing was suspicious at least.

[Looch City]

Originally Posted by Quincy Egg

Why does the size matter? And by the way, it wasn't exactly "little." Explosives can still be placed inside of something that size.

Okay, I'll bite.

How would you have packaged the electronics? Spent $500 on a custom made stained-wood box?

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by Quincy Egg

It is when it contains a digital display that resembles a timer.

holy #### my wife has put a bomb on my side of the bed!!

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

You might even say he's a redneck....

Or he is living in a Demented Reality...

[psyang]

Originally Posted by Quincy Egg

It is when it contains a digital display that resembles a timer.

It's a digital clock. Virtually every digital clock has an led display. I'd say, instead, that timers often resemble digital clocks, not the other way around.

My daughter has a little arduino board. It's barebones, but you can buy arduino kits like this one that contains lots of goodies, including an led display. Building things like clocks isn't as a rare an activity as you might think.

[ResAlien]

Originally Posted by Quincy Egg

Why does the size matter? And by the way, it wasn't exactly "little." Explosives can still be placed inside of something that size.

Never mind the pencil box, I see dozens upon dozens of kids trapsing around with bags large enough to carry several pounds of explosives every single day at my child's school. I want to know what the administration is doing to combat these daily threats. They could be filled with sarin gas, or bees!

[btimbit]

It does kind of look like a bomb, but if it was a white kid I doubt anything happens.

[Baron von Kriterium]

Originally Posted by Quincy Egg

Why does the size matter?

It doesn't; that's what I keep telling my wife.

[zamler]

I don't know about this being a racial thing I could see some teachers over reacting and doing the same thing no matter who the student was. The arrest, not sure except it was stupid.

[Daradon]

Originally Posted by CroFlames

I don't think it was. Remember the pop-tart case?

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/examiner...rt-suspension/

American schools are paranoid. And they have good reason to be. The arrest was obviously absurd though. Once the cops arrived and saw it wasn't a bomb, why arrest him?

I guess we never know the full story, and every story has two sides. I don't think it was racism, just fear. But it could very well have been racism too.

Kinda funny though how you add "And Texas" to your post though accusing them of being racist just because it's Texas. Isn't that stereotyping on your part as well?

Dude, I've lived in Texas. If you wanna call it stereotyping, and to a degree it is, I'm fine with that.

Yes the schools are paranoid. But most of that fear is still built on racism. Which is funny cause the people shooting up the schools are usually affluent white kids.

Racist, racist, racist.

[Igottago]

I think the biggest thing is, once they (probably pretty quickly) realized it wasn't a bomb, they still carried through with an arrest and wanted to charge him for making a "hoax bomb".

At least the one teacher had the good sense to tell him not to show it to anyone else, realizing his co-workers and law enforcement there are a bunch of f'n idiots.

[Daradon]

Yes, the arrest is the weirdest part, as we all agree. But you can't separate it from the story.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by corporatejay

I have no problem with the teacher reporting it to the school or the school investigating it, frankly or even taking it away. But the arrest was way over the top.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/16/93...istrict-letter

Irving Police spokesman Officer James McLellan told the station, "We attempted to question the juvenile about what it was and he would simply only tell us that it was a clock."

The teenager did that because, well, it was a clock, he said.

Ahmed's father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, who immigrated from Sudan and has twice run for that country's presidency, told CNN Wednesday that he was upset that the school did not contact him immediately to tell him about the situation.

When Ahmed was called out of class, he said he was brought into a room with four police officers, one of whom said, "Yup. That's who I thought it was."

A reporter at a news conference Wednesday asked Chief Boyd about the allegations that Ahmed was told he could not call his father and was interrogated alone for some time at the station.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by burn_this_city

Clocks are bad, guns are good. Got it.

[Looch City]

Originally Posted by chemgear

http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/16/93...istrict-letter

Irving Police spokesman Officer James McLellan told the station, "We attempted to question the juvenile about what it was and he would simply only tell us that it was a clock."

The teenager did that because, well, it was a clock, he said.

Ahmed's father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, who immigrated from Sudan and has twice run for that country's presidency, told CNN Wednesday that he was upset that the school did not contact him immediately to tell him about the situation.

When Ahmed was called out of class, he said he was brought into a room with four police officers, one of whom said, "Yup. That's who I thought it was."

A reporter at a news conference Wednesday asked Chief Boyd about the allegations that Ahmed was told he could not call his father and was interrogated alone for some time at the station.

Wow, that's just infuriating.

[Baron von Kriterium]

From the NY Times:

When Ahmed Mohamed, 14, brought the clock to MacArthur High School in Irving, Tex., on Monday, an engineering teacher suggested that he not show the invention to other teachers. But it beeped during an English class, prompting Ahmed to show his English teacher what it was, according to an account in The Dallas Morning News.

The fact that the kid first showed his engineering teacher what he made tells me had no ulterior motives (such as a hoax bomb). You can build Class D amplifiers in those little boxes now. Hell, I've seen them in Altoids tins. So, part of the challenge is to create something different, using not your typical enclosures.

Basically, stuff that I used to do routinely as a kid and that got me started on my career in engineering will now get your ass slapped in cuffs, get your prints and photos on record to go into who-knows-what database for-e-ver, and basically will scar you for life from ever wanting to interact with teachers or police...

So what’s the lesson here learned by Ahmed? That inventiveness and eccentricity are not only unappreciated in the United States, but that exhibiting such traits is dangerous.

[Ashasx]

This post from reddit does a good job summarizing my thoughts:

IMO it looks sketchy as hell. I can see where the teacher and the police could see where a similar device could be maliciously dropped somewhere in school and cause a panic. That is what they are accusing him of, not creating a real, working bomb.

But they handled it poorly. He showed the clock to his engineering teacher earlier in the day and the teacher warned him that he shouldn't show anyone else. They police should have had a quick conversation with that teacher to confirm that the boy was telling the truth; he built a clock and was excited to show it to his engineering teacher. End of story and no one has to handcuff a kid and interrogate him without his parents present (another huge mistake on the polices part.)

William Aberhart High was evacuated a number of years ago because of a briefcase (that looked very similar) that was placed in a garbage can. In the end, I think it was just full of clothes or something, but the idea of a bomb threat was treated very seriously.

As somebody who doesn't know much (anything) about explosives, I can understand why someone would think the clock looks like a bomb, or was intended to look like a bomb. I don't really understand the purpose of mounting this clock in a case like that though.

The situation was just handled extremely poorly.