Laugh (if you can)

[Diego Pigozzo]

Irving 9th-grader arrested after taking homemade clock to school: 'So you tried to make a bomb?'

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/northwest-dallas-county/headlines/20150915-irving-ninth-grader-arrested-after-taking-homemade-clock-to-school.ece

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

As a white American, I am horribly embarrassed by this report.
I hope the ACLU will help him sue the school and town leaders for extensive damages.

[Diego Pigozzo]

As a white American, I am horribly embarrassed by this report.
I hope the ACLU will help him sue the school and town leaders for extensive damages.

On the ACLU, I agree with you (fully understanding that a victory won't change a thing).

But I'm curious: what embarrassed you?

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

As a white American, I am horribly embarrassed by this report.
I hope the ACLU will help him sue the school and town leaders for extensive damages.

Oh, please Eric!

You notice a backpack with something ticking inside and you would not be concerned!? I wish Tsarnaev's teachers reacting the same, out of an abundance of caution, when they saw a pressure cooker in his backpack, instead of assuming he is simply heading to a cooking class.

[amolitor]

It's not the concern, which is proper, it was the arrest which was idiotic.

Do none of the teachers know this child? Can none of the teachers make some sort of judgement that this child it probably telling the truth when he says it's just a clock? The police, who do not personally know the child seem to have been eventually able to come to this conclusion, so props to them.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

It's not the concern, which is proper, it was the arrest which was idiotic.

Do none of the teachers know this child? Can none of the teachers make some sort of judgement that this child it probably telling the truth when he says it's just a clock? The police, who do not personally know the child seem to have been eventually able to come to this conclusion, so props to them.

Police, not teachers, are professionally trained to make that distinction, as they did and as they should.

[amolitor]

I disagree. Teachers are supposed to know rather a lot about young minds and how they work.

In America, we say 'better a 100 guilty men go free than one innocent should suffer', our court system operates on an assumption of innocence. Unfortunately, our schools and our police often seem to operate the other way around.

It is a simple corollary that, in America, we ought to occasionally accept a tragedy in return for greater individual freedom. Unhappily, the authoritarian elements have been working quite hard to emphasize the "occasional tragedy" side of that, in order to get us to trade in our individual freedoms. This is an age-old process, one which I assume you're quite familiar with, Slobodan. Governments all do this, all the time, with varying degrees of success.

Lately they're having more success than usual in the USA. I dare say it'll swing back.

[Robert Roaldi]

Hard to imagine a clock causing an explosion unless there are some explosives around.

As a precaution then, maybe they should shut down every school/college/university electronics lab in the country. And confiscate every electronics book every published. And shut down every electronics web site. And shut down the engineering departments.

Or maybe then, as a precaution, they should shut down every gun store and confiscate all the ammo....oh wait.

There are literally millions of kids and not-so-kids building electronic circuits all the time, millions of educational kits sold, yup, let's be pro-active and arrest everyone who has ever bought one, just in case.

Please.

[amolitor]

Presumably the police were able to determine that it was not a genuine explosive device more or less immediately upon arrival. Indeed, it seems likely that the teachers made that determination by themselves. Or, to be exact, the media reports (usually error-filled, lazy, and sloppy, to be sure) do not report that the teachers put the alleged "bomb" out in the middle of the field, or evacuate the school, or do any of the things you'd normally do with a suspected bomb.

If we stipulate (in spite of the sloppiness of the media) that everyone knew, or was fairly certain, early on that it was a bomb, we're now in the land of "well, I think the kid made a hoax bomb which is against the rules" and now we're arresting the kid based on what we think his motivation might have been. In the absence of any obvious "tells" like fake sticks of dynamite, or globs of claylike substances, or similars, we're arresting him based on what we presume the contents of his mind to be.

We are, in short, in the world of arresting people for thought crimes.

That's not a good place to be.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

I disagree. Teachers are supposed to know rather a lot about young minds and how they work.

In America, we say 'better a 100 guilty men go free than one innocent should suffer', our court system operates on an assumption of innocence. Unfortunately, our schools and our police often seem to operate the other way around.

It is a simple corollary that, in America, we ought to occasionally accept a tragedy in return for greater individual freedom. Unhappily, the authoritarian elements have been working quite hard to emphasize the "occasional tragedy" side of that, in order to get us to trade in our individual freedoms. This is an age-old process, one which I assume you're quite familiar with, Slobodan. Governments all do this, all the time, with varying degrees of success.

Lately they're having more success than usual in the USA. I dare say it'll swing back.

You got to be kidding, Andrew!!!

All that talk about "presumption of innocence" does not mean there won't be arrests. Innocence is established in the due process, not before. The guy is not charged. The system works.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

...In the absence of any obvious "tells" like fake sticks of dynamite, or globs of claylike substances, or similars...

It could have been a dry run. Certainly warrants a talk (with the professionals, not teachers).

[amolitor]

A "dry run"?

a) the "dry run" hypothesis is utterly bankrupt. for every actual dry run carried out by bad guys there are, I dunno, a 100, 1000, an infinitude of innocent activities that people worry about as "dry runs". Bad guys tend to just go for it.

b) in America, a "dry run" is not a crime. It is, it turns out, perfectly legal to look at a house from the street to see if you could break in to it, because "casing a house" is a thought crime, not a real one, and in America we don't arrest for thought crimes. Well, we do, but we pretend very hard not to.

It looks a lot like some hysterical teacher just didn't like the kid. "His responses were passive aggressive so, even though we knew perfectly well that it wasn't a bomb, and it didn't look at all like a bomb, we called the police." Gosh, a 14 year old boy being passive aggressive. SHOCKING! CALL THA PO-PO!

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Hard to imagine a clock causing an explosion unless there are some explosives around. <= Key Point!
...
There are literally millions of kids and not-so-kids building electronic circuits all the time, millions of educational kits sold, yup, let's be pro-active and arrest everyone who has ever bought one, just in case.

Please.

And while we're at it, confiscate all cell phones, whether dumb or smart. From watching TV we all know that they can act as detonators for bombs that might not even be in the backpack.   

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

I disagree. Teachers are supposed to know rather a lot about young minds and how they work....

So tell me what Tsarnaev's teacher would have said, had he caught him with a pressure cooker in his backpack? That he is a great kid, fun to have in class, great sense of humor, etc. What neighbors said about him: always nice and polite, helping elderly neighbors with groceries, etc. What did family say:  loving son, husband, brother, etc. In general, peace-loving, law-obeying, outstanding citizen. Until...

[amolitor]

There was no evacuation. Every single person involved was absolutely certain that this wasn't a real bomb, and if they claim otherwise, they're lying.

There are procedures. They involve evacuating the school.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... b) in America, a "dry run" is not a crime. It is, it turns out, perfectly legal to look at a house from the street to see if you could break in to it, because "casing a house" is a thought crime, not a real one, and in America we don't arrest for thought crimes. Well, we do, but we pretend very hard not to...

But it will certainly cause a cop to stop you and ask questions. As they should.

It could have been a dry run, or simply a warning sign. In retrospective, we certainly wish we acted sooner on certain warning signs, like training to fly a plane but not land it.

[amolitor]

If Tsarnaev can successfully bluff his way past a suspicious teacher with a bomb in his backpack you let him him go because here in America we have consciously made the choice that the occasional explosion is in fact a better deal than everyone getting constantly hassled about their pressure cookers and clocks and backpacks by officious authorities. Well, we haven't actually chosen it, but it is an inevitable consequence of the choices we've made.

These days we're struggling with the fact that we want perfect safety and perfect freedom, and we're tending to compromise of "well, as long as the jack booted thugs are hassling other people, that's OK" but historically that approach has a fairly poor track record. So, ultimately, it's jack-booted things all over the place, or occasional explosions. In fact, the occasional explosions never actually go away, but the chaps in the jack boots have these brochures that claim otherwise.

We don't much like officious authorities here in this country. I'm pretty sure most people don't much like them, but in a lot of places they put up with them anyways, because they don't get to choose.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... here in America we have consciously made the choice that the occasional explosion is in fact a better deal than everyone getting constantly hassled about their pressure cookers and clocks and backpacks by officious authorities....

We did!? Is that why millions upon millions are taking their shoes off before boarding a plane? Or your backpack is inspected in NY underground?

[amolitor]

Indeed. As a sketchy youth, I had several casual conversations with police. Happily for me, they were always more or less pleasant, and as the police were unable to prove that I was actually up to anything illegal, they never put handcuffs on me. In fact, in at least one case I was up to something mildly illegal, and was given a ride home and a warning.

They should ask questions, they should investigate. And they shouldn't arrest people for reason at all. And, usually, they don't.

I think they probably cuffed the kid because some hysterical teacher was making wild accusations, and there's some procedural rule that says you've got to cuff the kid.

I cannot speak to the police procedures here. The school, however, obviously behaved wrongly.

[amolitor]

We did!? Is that why millions upon millions are taking their shoes off before boarding a plane? Or your backpack is inspected in NY underground?

Yes we did. Our glorious leaders made some alternative choices on our behalf, as glorious leaders are wont to do.

I mean, I haven't taken a poll, but informally a lot of people seem to think the shoe thing is annoying and idiotic. Just to get specific. Also, as noted, we're currently in the throes of an unmanageable conflict of desires, which produces some weird behaviors.