Summations Only

This is a reply to Message 221 in the What's the deal with motor vehicle violations? thread. It seems more appropriate here. Because video cameras are becoming ubiquitous, we're now learning that police abuse or exceed their authority far more frequently than previously believed. We can't just take that information and say, basically, "Oh, well, that's too bad," and then keep doing what we're doing. We have to change things. Solutions like "more screening, more training and more accountability" are just more same old same old.I heard an interesting story on the radio a while back, probably on NPR but I don't remember for sure. A musician and his musician friends had recently moved from San Francisco to New York to explore opportunities, so he was a newcomer to the city, and one day he had just exited the subway when he paused to roll a cigarette, which he liked to do because he was particular about his cigarettes. He was tackled and wrestled to the ground by someone who never identified himself. He tried to defend himself but soon found himself bloody and lying on the ground with his hands handcuffed behind his back.Two or three others showed up to join his attacker. Except for telling him to shut up, they didn't say anything to the musician, but he did hear some of their conversation. He soon realized they were plainclothes policemen, that they quickly figured out he only had tobacco, so a couple of them were instructed to comb the area nearby for evidence. They very quickly "discovered" an empty prescription drug container for a controlled substance but for someone else, and they told him it had been in his possession and he had discarded it when he realized he was being apprehended. He was told he was under arrest for resisting arrest and possession of a controlled substance.The musician's girlfriend's father was a lawyer, and he advised the musician that there was nothing he could do, he just had to go through the system, which he did. I don't recall the legal outcome for the musician, but nothing ever happened to the police. The arrest occurred in broad daylight. The police feel so empowered that when they go rogue they feel safe in doing it out in the open and with all their comrades fully aware of exactly what they're doing.There are inherent problems in law enforcement that cannot be solved. For example, we want a beat patrolman to objectively enforce the law, but what does a patrolman do when his sergeant tells him he's making far fewer arrests than others in the department. Maybe he doesn't change his behavior, but then he gets his performance review and a poor raise or no raise. Now what does he do? How much is his judgment about what is an arrestable offense affected by his situation? And this is just one example. A policeman's judgment is affected by scores of factors having nothing to do with enforcing the law, and there's no way to change that.To become safer we must first disarm the public, and then we must disarm the police.--Percy

From the Dallas Morning News: Irving 9th-grader arrested after taking homemade clock to school: 'So you tried to make a bomb?'The short of it is that 14-year old Ahmed Mohamed threw together a digital clock from a spare circuit board and a display shoehorned into a pencil case. It was in his backpack in English class when it beeped, and the teacher asked to see it. She thought it looked like a bomb and alerted school administration who alerted the police. The police thought it looked like a bomb, too. Ahmed was arrested and taken away. Here's an image the Dallas Morning News posted that they say is the same sort of thing: There's a few problems here. Obviously the school personnel have watched too many action/adventure films where a little box with a digital display with numbers ticking away represents a bomb. But the display was not counting down but was showing the time. Obviously the police have too little training in recognizing actual bombs and were watching the same movies. Obviously no bomb sniffing dog was employed, and if they really believed the device was a bomb then why wasn't the building evacuated and the bomb squad called?I think the school and the police may eventually find themselves in a bit of trouble. Not big trouble, but trouble nonetheless. The Council on American-Islamic Relations is investigating, so the matter might not just disappear. Ahmed had just started high school, but in middle school he'd been in the robotics club. Presumably the high school also has a robotics club, and it can't be too unusual for students to be seen with cobbled together electronics from time to time. Incredibly poor judgment was demonstrated by school and police. At a minimum they're going to have to apologize.Why am I putting this here in the gun control thread? Because the same police with the incredibly poor judgment about what's a bomb and what isn't also have guns. Ahmed's lucky they didn't shoot first and ask questions later.--Percy

Equally lucky that various suggestions have not come to fruition, that untrained, nervous teachers aren't armed and ready to shoot dead any school child they think might be a threat.

The BBC is reporting he's been suspended for three days too. A sincere apology might be more appropriate.I do get that the police need to do their job - but it's at least polite, if having done their job, they find out that the person is innocent, to apologise to him. Same goes for the school. Suspending him for bringing a clock to school is just daft.Edited by vimesey, : No reason given.

All they had to do was cut the red wire. Or is it the blue wire?

Wouldn't have worked - sniffer dogs are colour blind :-)

you'd think it would be obvious that a bare circuit board with a few transistors, wires, and a clock isn't a bomb because it lacks explosive material. like, there's nothing there to go "boom".try telling a school official or a police office that without seeming like you know how to make a bomb, though. like. it's a clock. it's telling the time. did they think it was a coincidence that it showed the time? i think part of this which may be getting swept under the rug here is that pretending you have a bomb is also kind of a bad thing, and maybe a crime if it seems like you're making a threat. i dunno, i am not a lawyer. but i'm pretty sure bomb threats are illegal, and it may be that "it looks like a bomb in the movies" is meant to say that they thought he was trying to scare people or something.still, this is fucking stupid. yeah, that's thing. if the teacher seriously thought it was a bomb, he or she would not have put it in their desk drawer after confiscating it, and there would have been a bomb squad called. no adult involved actually thought this was a bomb, and if they did, well, they should probably all lose their jobs for a) being so stupid and b) not handling a threat they believed was credible in a serious and appropriate manner.i probably haven't shared this before, but i was investigated by the police once on suspicion of bombing. so this kind of makes me personally upset.i was in high school when columbine happened, and it changed everything to do with the way the administration treated the kids (especially the awkward, black-wearing, outcast types like yours truly during the blunder-years). i was out of school the day of the columbine massacre (sick? lazy? i forget), and being the awkward, black-wearing outcast type, i was quickly the butt of jokes and the target of fairly vicious rumors immediately afterward. literally the next day, someone called in a bomb threat to my school. it was credible enough that we were evacuated from our classrooms for maybe 45 minutes to an hour, while they searched the school, i think with a bomb-sniffing dog. rumors + bomb threat = obviously i did it.i was searched by the administration the next day, and suspended -- i'd been dumb enough to have a pocket knife on me, which i used for trimming pencils and such in art classes. yeah, listen to adults who say "maybe don't bring that to school tomorrow." so, while i was off school, the police showed up at my door. apparently the rumors meant i was now a lead/suspect in the case.you know why i wasn't taken from my house in handcuffs? because i am white.i mean, literally. it was clear from the interview that they didn't think it was remotely credible that i was involved, and still asked their standard pointed questions without much enthusiasm. amazingly, they let me actually hear the bomb threat; they had a recording. thick hispanic accent, older voice, not great english.and that was that. school still sucked for a while when i got back, but this easily could have gone another way.

What I've read, including the article linked to, says that the police thought it was a "hoax bomb" meaning that their theory was that the student had intended to scare folks with a non-bomb. In my view, that theory accommodates having a device that is a lot less than a real bomb, particularly if the school is reacting poorly when they call the police. Before I blame police, I'd need to know what the school communicated to the police.In a story I read earlier, the student showed the device to another teacher earlier in the day. That teacher understood that the kid had a clock and recommended to the student that he not take the device out anymore that day. Unfortunately, after the device beeped, the student had no choice but to follow the 2nd teacher's orders and take the device out for all to see. I suspect that somebody, maybe starting with the teacher panicked. At 14 I probably would have thought it funny to duck under a table and pretend to be scared. Too much speculation here about the robotics club, but it is discouraging that cobbled together electronics is not a familiar high school thing in this day and age.

None of this stuff has anything to do with guns. If the events occurred as represented here, the cops were simply rogues. I understand that armed rogues are a real problem. But the behavior here is intolerable regardless of the guns. Why was tackling even required here? Why was James Blake tackled?I tried but was unsuccessful at locating the details behind the tobacco-to-drugs story. I'd really like to know how things worked out for the musician.

Well, I thought I was coming at it in a way that does have something to do with guns. We know that granting too much power tends to encourage abuse of power, and I think the number of examples of police exhibiting poor judgment and engaging in misconduct is telling us that we should ask ourselves whether we've already granted this group too much power. Guns are part of police power, and I was offering that story in support of my position that police as a group do not exhibit a high enough level of good judgment or steadiness of moral character to be granted the power of life and death. I spent five minutes looking for this on the Internet when I was composing my message, and I just tried again, no luck. After thinking about it some more I believe it's possible I heard it on The Moth, but the searches I tried there didn't turn up anything.I've run into this problem before, hearing something on the radio and then not being able to find any sign of it on the Internet. I just tried to find a story at the The Moth that I'm certain I heard there, and I couldn't find it. There's no way to know what words they put in the story's title or in the short blurb that accompanies it. We could use an audio search tool.--Percy

That theory would also conveniently rewrite history. Hauling the kid away in handcuffs seems like a huge over-reaction if they thought it was a hoax.On the other hand, he's lucky they didn't shoot him just to be on the safe side.

There's apparently a law against hoax bombs in Texas:

quote:

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TEX PE. CODE ANN. 46.08 : Texas Statutes - Section 46.08: HOAX BOMBS

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1. 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:
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   1. make another believe that the hoax bomb is an explosive or incendiary device; or
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   2. cause alarm or reaction of any type by an official of a public safety agency or volunteer agency organized to deal with emergencies.
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2. An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor.

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Precisely what did the kid do to cause even a hint of suspicion that he had violated this law? Nothing. He didn't violate 1a because he repeatedly told everyone it was a clock. And he didn't violate 1b because that only applies to "an official of a public safety agency or volunteer agency organized to deal with emergencies," which is not school staff. A police officer is certainly "an official of a public safety agency...organized to deal with emergencies," but the kid didn't cause them to become alarmed about a possible bomb. It was school staff that did that.By my reckoning, the police should have arrested the English teacher because she took possession of the device ("A person commits an offense if the person knowingly...possesses a hoax bomb...") and then caused the police to become alarmed ("cause alarm...by an official of a public safety agency...").AbE: If a homemade digital display showing the time can be construed as a hoax bomb, can't many other things? Is it safe to walk around Texas with wires and a digital circuit board?--PercyEdited by Percy, : AbE.

Of course this only makes news 'cause the kid's a Muslim.And a bunch of weenies want to shout racism and Islamophobia.But schools do this kind of stupid shit all the time. School teachers are pretty much mindless nitwits.If it's not a clock that's a bomb, it's a fountain pen that's a knife.The police acted exactly as they should have when someone calls them from a school claiming they think they have a bomb on site.The problem was the teachers. And the problem was them being idiots, not Islamophobes.

I think we all agree that the kid did nothing wrong. The question is whether the school told the police that the kid initiated a bomb threat. My impression is that the school is making lots of 'we did the right thing by reporting him' noises and the school system seems to be backing them up. I don't believe the teacher had the required mens re to commit the offense even if the teachers actions met the elements of the crime. Justice Scalia might think the law should be applied as you describe, but he's, well Scalia. Is there any reason why a bomb could not largely consist of a digital display showing the time? Obviously we need some explosive stuff too...Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

There is no way to demonstrate the typical level of police character with an anecdote however egregious the behavior described in the anecdote. I know I wouldn't let an anti-vaxer get away with a similar argument, and I wouldn't let a creationist get away with insisting that all scientists were frauds because some chemist got caught faking his research.