#IStandWithAhmed

I don't know what happened to the original thread, but it turns out that meme about Ahmed's clock next to a supposed suitcase bomb was b.s. Shocking I know.

The picture of the "suitcase bomb" was actually a Honeywell demo kit taken from this obscure BLOG!

Malta EMEA Meeting

 

I don't want to get too far into this, as I still bow to franticscribe and his/her legal expertise.

HOWEVER ... it's looking more and more to me as if Ahmed was trolling for a reaction and got way more (both negatively and positively) than he bargained for. The dweeb-o-sphere's coming down hard on his claim that he "created" a clock. At best, it looks as if he disassembled a clock and then re-assembled it with a, shall we say, curious aesthetic in mind.

Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed's Clock... and Ourselves.

 

I don't think we're that far apart doctorquant. My point in the other thread was that police didn't have probable cause to arrest him at that moment because all they had was this odd-looking device and the kid's word that it was a clock. They didn't have anything to indicate that he had intended it to be a hoax bomb, and it was missing one of the key pieces to make it appear as a prima facie bomb - the explosive element.

Just because they didn't have probable cause to arrest in that moment would not have stopped them from continuing to investigate. If they turned up evidence that he had intent for it to be something else, they could have taken action then. Police do that sort of followup investigation all the time after making a decision not to charge. I'm not sure they could ever get there, absent a confession, but they could have tried. A thorough investigation may have turned up evidence of his intent - whether that was to take apart and re-case a clock or to scare the crap out of a teacher - but it didn't occur.

I think I did say initially that I was skeptical about whether they even had enough to get to reasonable articulable suspicion to investigate, but that was before I read the hoax bomb statute. They didn't have RAS for a real bomb because it was pretty evident that it wasn't one, but I think they do have it under the hoax bomb statute.

 

Let me just point out that I am neither defending nor justifying his treatment. Instead, I am looking very askance at the idea that this innocent little nerd ran afoul of a posse of bigots because "he built a clock."

 

Still the most disturbing clock built this year.

 

#IStandWithMagoIL

 

UConn/UCF just gets the pulse quickening, doesn't it?

 

My wife makes a valid point: If the teachers thought it was a bomb, why didn't they evacuate the school and call the bomb squad?

 

That point was made on the other thread, which was apparently deleted (No great loss. It had gotten ugly).
The only theory anybody had offered was "stupidity."

 

Hell, they called out the bomb squad around these parts the other day for what appeared to be a grenade in a yard. It was a toy. No logical explanation why, if ANYONE thought this could be a bomb, that they didn't take it much more seriously.

 

I guess it got lost in the noise in the other thread, but I linked to an article that clearly explained the lack of evacuation and bomb squad. The school resource officers determined very quickly that it wasn't an actual bomb, since it lacked explosives, so there was no need to evacuate anyone or call in the fun toys. Er, I mean the bomb squad.

 

Which brings us back to the question of why the kid was put in handcuffs if they already knew there was no real threat.