TX - Ahmed Mohamed, 14, creates clock, shows teachers, gets arrested, 14 Sep 2015

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MsFacetious

What a Kerfuffle...
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When Ahmed Mohamed went to his high school in Irving, Texas, Monday, he was so excited. A teenager with dreams of becoming an engineer, he wanted to show his teacher the digital clock he'd made from a pencil case.

The 14-year-old's day ended not with praise, but punishment, after the school called police and he was arrested.

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"They arrested me and they told me that I committed the crime of a hoax bomb, a fake bomb," the freshman later explained to WFAA after authorities released him.

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.

On Wednesday, police announced the teen will not be charged.

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Boyd was also asked if the teen's religious or ethnic identity played a role in how he was treated. The chief said it did not, and he praised the department's relationship with Irving's Muslim community.

However, he said, "We live in an age where you can't take things like that to school."

[video=cnn;us/2015/09/16/texas-muslim-student-arrested-clock-orig.cnn]http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/16/us/texas-student-ahmed-muslim-clock-bomb/index.html[/video]
 
My daughter once got sent home for wearing "Jack Skellington" knee socks. Because it was "occult" and "frightening to other children".

My hand to God.

But we live in the Bible Belt, where everything is side-eyed and hated without reservation. Unless you fit a certain "mold".
 
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015...hoto_of_the_homemade_c-m-23_1442424383957.jpg


Sorry, mikkismom beat me to it ! :)

There's a thing called "common sense" that used to prevail...
Jmo, but the 'clock' didn't appear to be dangerous, just an invention a kid might think up.

Guess it's better to "err" on the side of caution. If it was an explosive device-- wouldn't it have to have C4 attached to it-- or a pressure cooker ? Something that could explode ?
:moo:
 
A kid got arrested for having a 'butter knife' for spreading cream cheese on his bagel. Lots of teens get falsely arrested because of ZERO tolerance rules.

Looking at that picture above, I am not surprised he was taken in and questioned. Looks very much like a bomb. Why didn't he clear it with his teacher first?
 
From twitter:
[video=twitter;644193755814342656]https://twitter.com/potus/status/644193755814342656[/video]

President Obama
‏@POTUS
Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great.

:)
 
Doesn't look like a clock at all! It looks scary!

You guys are looking at the pic, right???
 
Looks very much like a bomb.
rsbm

It does not. And he was arrested after taking it to his teacher. This was a child's engineering project -- do you really think it should look like device engineered for mass production?

Why would a bomb have such a large display for the time? A bomb doesn't really need any display at all. If one thinks that bombs tick down with beeps and have digital displays, one has watched too many crappy tv shows and movies.
 
I worked in a high school for years. Schools get a lot of death threats, bomb threats, gun threats etc etc. Any time an electronic device with wires is brought onto the campus with no warning, no planning, it NEEDS to be checked out.

If that teacher had patted the kid on the back, put the clock on the desk, and it blew up, people would be calling for her dismissal if not her head.
 
An example of the fear of the " other".
 
I wonder what people would think of Steven Jobs, Syrian heritage?
 
I wonder what people would think of Steven Jobs, Syrian heritage?

From wikipedia

father, Abdulfattah "John" Jandali (b. 1931), was born into a Muslim household and grew up in Homs, Syria.[9] Jandali is the son of a self-made millionaire who did not go to college and a mother who was a traditional housewife.[9] While an undergraduate at the American University of Beirut, he was a student activist and spent time in jail for his political activities.[9] Although Jandali initially wanted to study law, he eventually decided to study economics and political science,[9] and pursued a Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Wisconsin. It was there that Jandali met Joanne Carole Schieble, a Catholic of German descent who grew up on a farm in Wisconsin.[2][9] As a doctoral candidate, Jandali was Schieble's teaching assistant although both were the same age.[10] Mona Simpson (Jobs's biological sister), notes that her maternal grandparents were not happy that their daughter was dating Jandali: "it wasn't that he was Middle-Eastern so much as that he was a Muslim. But there are a lot of Arabs in Michigan and Wisconsin. So it's not that unusual."[10] Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs's official biographer, additionally states that Schieble's father "threatened to cut Joanne off completely" if she continued the relationship.[2]

Birth
 
I wonder what this school would have thought of that little crystal radio I built from a kit when I was in elementary school?

And no, Ahmed's clock did not look scary to me.
 
rsbm

It does not. And he was arrested after taking it to his teacher. This was a child's engineering project -- do you really think it should look like device engineered for mass production?

Why would a bomb have such a large display for the time? A bomb doesn't really need any display at all. If one thinks that bombs tick down with beeps and have digital displays, one has watched too many crappy tv shows and movies.

He had it in his backpack in English class and it BEEPED. the teacher asked what it was and he opened it :

[video=cnn;us/2015/09/16/texas-muslim-student-arrested-clock-orig.cnn]http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/16/us/texas-student-ahmed-muslim-clock-bomb/index.html[/video]


He recalled showing one teacher the clock and her telling him that she thought it was "nice" but he shouldn't show other instructors, according to the paper. The teen put the clock in his bookbag but an alarm beeped in the middle of sixth period and Ahmed showed the teacher what he had, the newspaper reported.

"She was like, it looks like a bomb," he said.

"I told her, 'It doesn't look like a bomb to me.'"





How could she have ignored a beeping electronic device in a student's backpack? It was not an engineering class. It was an English class and he should not have been carrying around a beeping device with wires.
 
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