Another Teen Frightens School Personnel With Technical Stuff; Panic, Stupidity Fail To Ensue
from the where-did-all-this-logic-and-restraint-come-from? dept
Ahmed Mohamed, age 14, arrived at school with a clock sitting inside a pencil box. It was obviously a hoax bomb, which is a Texas thing that allows people who don't possess bombs to be prosecuted as if they did. Fun stuff. I'm sure everyone involved wishes their day had gone another way -- with the exception of Ahmed Mohamed, who has now been invited to Facebook, the White House and MIT. Everyone on the other side of the equation has been invited to do other stuff -- most of it involving nearly-impossible sexual acts or perversely scatalogical feats.
Here's another story about a student with an interest in things school personnel tend to find inordinately worrying. The climate of fear far too many schools actively encourage with zero tolerance policies played a part here, as did law enforcement's worrying willingness to feed off the negative energy this climate generates. On the plus side, overreaction and idiocy played nearly no part in this incident.
Lt. Raul Denis, spokesman for the Horry County Police Department, says someone found the two notebooks containing disturbing material inside a classroom at Forestbrook Middle School. A school resource officer was alerted of the discovery last Wednesday.The notebooks belonged to an autistic 13-year-old. Here's what police found inside them:
Police say the journals contained information on “sensitive subjects like weapons and explosives science, maps, blue prints, jobs and stories pertaining to a video game called Balloon Tower Defense 5.” Denis said in a release there was also a reference to a school the student had once attended.The contents have not been published, so we'll never know how much of a threat was posed by the teen's Balloon Tower Defense fan fiction. The "sensitive subjects" deemed "disturbing" by the school are also easily Googled subjects. And this student was hardly the first teen boy to express an interest in weapons and explosives. Perhaps the real problem was the mention of a school, which is like waving a
But there's a happy-ish ending to this story. While we may find issue with the contents of the notebook being inherently suspicious, the police did the sort of thing they're supposed to do: they investigated before leaping to ridiculous conclusions.
For a very brief period, the autistic teen was facing charges for "disturbing school." The statute is, as expected, incredibly vague, which makes it a handy thing to use to detain teens with scary notebooks while everything is sorted out.
(A) It shall be unlawful:The rest of the statute deals with loitering and "acting in an obnoxious manner."
(1) for any person wilfully or unnecessarily (a) to interfere with or to disturb in any way or in any place the students or teachers of any school or college in this State
But this was a very brief detention. The police did all the things they should have done. They determined there was nothing threatening about the contents. They discovered the teen had no access to weapons or explosives. Most importantly, they CONTACTED HIS PARENTS, who explained everything.
“The investigation and examination of the journals found that the child is diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and is highly intelligent, and the journals, which the parents were aware of, are used as a therapeutic/comforting mechanism,” Denis said in a press release. “the child focuses on these subjects because he dreams of being a nuclear engineer.”At which point, the student was released to his parents and the charge dropped. It would have been better if this could have been conducted without detaining the teen, but considering all the variables, this went about as well as can be expected in the zero tolerance era.
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Filed Under: overreaction, schools, students
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When you are surprised that people in management and law enforcement positions act sanely then something is very wrong with society.
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They might be the sort that do their jobs like they are supposed to. Pardon my cynicism that I doubt they are.
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No, the detention makes it just as bad.
Kind of like "I know you are black, that's why I stopped you. But it's all good, because I let you go."
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Re: No, the detention makes it just as bad.
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There was an odd shaped cloud, put the school on lockdown, because if it turns out it was a fighter plane about to gun down all the children we'd be responsible!!!
Parents have abdicated their responsibilities to society to handle, so you have to be as idiotic as the dumbest parent (or most vocal voter). The policies are written to cover their ass to the utmost and professionals are supposed to be the cooler heads... and sadly many times they get whipped into the hysteria and go full bore.
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The good ole gov'ment will take care of it.
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I understand it was all about nothing, but how do you ask questions to someone that isn't there?
I'm glad the cops had a moment of sanity, but I don't think detainment was unwarranted. Especially when after calling the parents it was all cleared up.
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If the "weapons and explosives science, maps, blue prints, jobs and stories" were for the actual school and real weapons (and not a game) then, yeah detainment would be warranted.
Being detained just for having a journal for something that looks scary but can be easily be identified as fantasy is problematic. I would have spent ALOT of time being detained since I normally had "blueprints for weapons and stories" for various Role playing games like D&D and Robotech. I even made a role playing game based on maps of the city about defending against a Soviet attack (it was the 80's and was into Tom Clancy novels). That probably would get me on the No Fly list these days.
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Because there was no crime. There was a notebook. The proper procedure is not to make an arrest and THEN read the notebooks to see that there's no threat. The proper procedure is to read the notebook, see there is no threat, and return the notebook to the student without arresting him.
They arrested him under a law that seems unconstitutionally broad, especially as they applied it here. The notebook "disturbed" someone? That's enough to get him arrested?
Asking questions and arresting someone are not the same thing. And he has a 5th Amendment right to not incriminate himself - he does not have to answer their questions. (Speaking of the 5th Amendment, there's also a right to not be deprived of liberty without due process of law. You can't just arrest someone for no good reason.)
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Because they'd be all too liable to detain the kid instead of the one who caused the panic: the one who saw the notebook as a threat.
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Sure, getting that Super Monkey feels food. But at what cost?
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I love Bloon Tower Defense
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Re: I love Bloon Tower Defense
I had to delete Bloon TD5 off my phone a few months back. Too addictive and way too fun.
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Or vs and
Willfully OR unnecessarily? So if it was necessary (like, if you pulled the fire alarm because there was an actual fire) you could still go to jail? Or if you accidentally trip the alarm because someone pushed you into it, you could go to jail because it was unnecessary even though it was not willful?
Also, I don't think "wilfully" is how you spell that word.
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What frightens me..
Luckily he has dependable friends to keep an eye on him.
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I've actually played the game in question
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They did EXACTLY what they were supposed to...
I agree with the poster above, when it's newsworthy that people acted WITH sanity, it's a disturbing world.
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Re: They did EXACTLY what they were supposed to...
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Fotunate
If I were a young student today I can only imagine how things would go down, I can be completely sure nothing like it did, but rather somehow where I would be completely unwittingly bewildered and equated with being bad.
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LOCKDOWN
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(1) for any person wilfully or unnecessarily (a) to interfere with or to disturb in any way or in any place the students or teachers of any school or college in this State
So if you are a student, quietly sitting in class, and a teacher calls on you, aren't you being "disturbed"?
If you are a student sitting in class, and someone knocks on the classroom door, aren't you being "disturbed"?
The best way to change this absurdly vague law, would be if students with cell phones would start abusing it.
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Zero Tolerance
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Having an AD&D or a MERP book with you flagged you as a psychopath.
And better not talk about Magic cards...
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Science Is Just Another Religion
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Re: Science Is Just Another Religion
Scientism Is Just Another Religion
Science in and of itself is belief neutral. It is a logical, systematic methodology. What beliefs you bring with you may (and usually do) dictate what you may see as the cause of the results you obtain. That is the hypotheses and subsequent theories you may develop will depend on your initial belief system, your resultant belief systems can change based on your scientific investigations.
What we quite often see today is an unquestioning adherence to a specific philosophical viewpoint. How often do people (scientists) ignore opposing viewpoints and hence any evidence that supports that opposing viewpoint? Much more often than we admit or even want to admit.
As I sit here pondering my next words, I am struck by the very clear mysticism of much of modern "scientific" thought. All of under the guise of extremely complex mathematical models and the incredible flights of fantasy by those who promote these ideas. Of course, if you propose a different model, you become branded as a "heretic", which interestingly enough is a "religious" term. The ensuing witch hunts just highlight how far "scientific" thought has fallen.
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Sadly, it's a principle that is hardly followed (like journalism and neutrality, lol). Those who follow it are the geniuses in our society.
And I don't think it's only a matter of intelligence, but also of attitude.
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One good example of your statement is in the study of galaxies. Instead of questioning whether gravity is the sole/major influence on galactic motion, they instead postulate that dark energy and dark matter "must" exist, even though there have been no tests/experiments that have shown either of these things exist. All in the pursuit of preserving the idea that gravity is the sole influence. This is simply not applying your statement about questioning everything.
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