If the school calls you into the office and there are 6 cops there to interrogate you, you should play coy. You should, in fact, say nothing at all except that you want to contact your lawyer. It's the 5th amendment. He wasn't indicted in the end, great. He was suspended by the school, who as it happens is an agency of the state as a public school. I would not want to handicap a public school's latitude to enforce the rules it needs to maintain its operations (even dumb ones). But, when it applies punishments to students for exercising their rights in the face of potential legal prosecution, isn't a form of double jeopardy (writ very, very small)? 'I can't touch you, but my friend over here can.' Anyway, I won't fault him, or any minority, or anyone at all really, for clamming up when a policeman starts asking about bombs. It's the smart thing even when you've done nothing wrong. As for the interrogation without a lawyer or parent, my understanding is the cops are free to do such interviews so long as the minor is not detained. But, what counts as 'detained' is a gray area. In my view, a 9th grader sent to the principal's office in a public high school is not going to feel like he is free to leave whenever he wants, so he is effectively detained. In that case, the cops need to proactively tell him that he is free to leave whenever, or else read him his Miranda rights. I don't know whether or not they did that.
Again, an extreme position. Curious as to what leads you to this? Did you inspect the device? Did the boy say he simply pulled a radio out of a box? Or are you basing this solely on a youtube video and blog? He is 14 years old. Whether it he wired it from parts from Radio Shack, or pulled together components from electric devices he had lying around, he seemed to think it was cool enough to show his science teacher. The science teacher seemed to think it was cool too.
Look at the device, it's clearly something that was commercially manufactured....if he was making his own clock why would he have a battery backup? The problem here is that there are some really stupid, naive people that get baffled by BS and then lash out. We need more people who are better than that.
When my older son was the same age, he was involved in all sorts of science projects, some assigned and some he built because he enjoyed doing it. I remember driving him to school with them and, on at least one occasion, helping him get the gizmo inside during a driving rain without getting the thing wet. Someone could have thought a couple of them "nefarious" due to their appearance, but we were never questioned. Of course, he was White. Funny how that works.
Was this before or after 9/11? White kids have been suspended for plastic knives at lunch in the post Columbine world we live in.
More important than 9/11 when it comes to school stuff is Columbine. Post-Columbine schools started acting REALLY differently to threats, perceived threats, and perceived intent to frighten people. It was night and day different after that point. Things got even worse than that after 9/11, but the change really started in 99
So the youtube video. Again, whether he wired the radio from scratch, or cobbled together using old radios lying around, the story is the same... Amazing to what length one will go to support a silly narrative...
While we are on the topic of bombs, bomb-look-a-likes, threats, etc and whether teachers are qualified to know what is and what is not a bomb, threat, etc: NSFW Spoiler <iframe width="854" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vn8dIXzu4Vg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
After. To be clear, while both my kids went to public schools in Austin, they were magnet public schools. The student has to apply to get in, and not everyone is accepted. If every public school in Texas were as good as Austin's magnet schools, particularly LASA, the Liberal Arts and Science Academy, which is one of the highest ranking public high schools in the country, we wouldn't be talking about the problems with the public schools in Texas. While they would be more expensive for taxpayers, you essentially get what you pay for. We live in Southwest Austin and LASA is in Northeast Austin, an hour bus ride each way, and if one of our kids had something going on after school (robotics for my oldest, theatre for my youngest), which they always did, I ended up making the trek across town to get them home. It was well worth it. Maybe he was simply "lucky" that a fuss wasn't made about some of the things he did. The school did (and does) have a lot of security, but that seems to be aimed more at LBJ High School, which shares a campus with LASA (they are on different floors of the school, sharing some facilities, like the cafeteria, athletics and theatre, for example), and is overwhelmingly made up of minorities. LASA is the highest ranking high school in Austin and has a majority of White students, sharing a campus with a high school ranked at or near the bottom, with both schools parked in a truly lousy neighborhood. You can draw your own conclusions from that.
You didn't watch the Maher segment. Cuban said that he spoke to the boy on the phone and that the boy's sister was telling the boy what to say. Cuban sounded like he found it all quite fishy.
Deck: When I was in sixth grade we brought firecrackers to school for a science demonstration (not sure what we were testing exactly, but blowing stuff up was likely our motivation). Firecrackers were illegal at the time. We were taken to the principals office for a 5 minute discussion (or maybe she came to our classroom?) our parents were informed, and we promised not to do it again. But not even a detention. Different times. (and it was awesome!). ..for my son's school we, and he had to sign a form promising not to bring any toy weapons to class or to play any battle type games on school grounds. Nerf guns were specifically mentioned. (I used to carry a pocket knife at his age)
all for forgering a 80's era clock. I wish I would have thought of it. Almost as good as getting the Nobel prize for doing absolutely nothing. There's some primo schwag for anyone in tech tho.
Damn right. That's why immigrants are driving science and tech in our colleges. The natives are so dumb they don't know why that low bar is tripping them.
Is there any sort of statement from Ahmed or his family about the details of what happened, or any equivalent statement from the school district or police? I guess I would have expected something by now since he is skipping school to travel.
Clearly you are going REALLY far to support a silly narrative when it's obvious to pretty much anyone who takes time to think about it that you're wrong. The kid didn't actually build anything. He didn't "cobble anything together using old radios lying around", he just took a functioning clock out of it's case and put it in a box. It's sad that you are going out of your way to make this something it's not simply because you want to keep your narrative alive.
No, I missed that episode of Maher. So the Cuban investigation finds the boy's story a little fishy. I would hope that our schools require a little more investigation and proof before suspending a child.
Six pages of this thread is all I can stand. Have any of the GOP presidential candidates or major figures come out and made statements defending the boy?
