Wednesday, September 16, 2015

You can't be too careful, or too paranoid

Don't know what it is, so it must be dangerous!

And since I've touched this, I'm not going to let go of it quickly:

At a press conference this morning, Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd said charges won't be filed against Ahmed Mohamed, the MacArthur High School freshman arrested Monday after bringing what school officials and police described as a "hoax bomb" on campus.

Boyd said the device -- confiscated by an English teacher despite the teen's insistence that it was a clock -- was "certainly suspicious in nature.

"The student showed the device to a teacher, who was concerned that it was possibly the infrastructure for a bomb," Boyd said.

School officers questioned Ahmed about the device and why he'd brought it to school. Boyd said Ahmed was then handcuffed "for his safety and for the safety of the officers" and taken to a juvenile detention center. He was later released to his parents, Boyd said.

"The follow-up investigation revealed the device apparently was a homemade experiment, and there's no evidence to support the perception he intended to create alarm," Boyd said.

During the news conference, Boyd touted the "outstanding relationship" he's had with the Muslim community in Irving. He said he talked to members of the Muslim community this morning and plans to meet with Ahmed's father later today.

Asked if the teen's religious beliefs factored into his arrest, Boyd said the reaction "would have been the same" under any circumstances.
And if you believe that last statement, I have some coastal land in Louisiana you'll want to buy.  Hurry, 'cause it's going fast!

Then there's the condescending "outstanding relationship" with the community-in-question argument.  I thought I'd quit hearing that when it was applied to blacks in the '70's.  And while the kid was only armed with a clock, he was handcuffed for his safety and the safety of others?

Seriously?

Besides, what made it suspicious?  The fact that no one could tell what it was?  Or that the kids' name was "Ahmed"?  What made it look dangerous had nothing to do with who was showing it to you?

Really?

So about that land in Louisiana.....

ADDING:  the world is shaming Irving and the school.  Whether they notice or not, Ahmed is redeemed.  And I don' t hesitate to say the teachers, the principal, the school district, the Irving police, and the Irving mayor, should be ashamed of themselves.  Not that I'm expecting them to be.....

5 comments:

  1. Some context on Muslim sentiment in the city in which he was arrested:

    The mayor of Irving, Beth Van Duyne, became a beloved national hero to America’s anti-Muslim fanatics when, last February, she seized on a fraudulent online chain letter, which claimed that area imams had created a special court based on sharia law. In response, Mayor Van Duyne posted a Facebook rant in which she vowed to “fight with every fiber of my being” the nonexistent “sharia court.” One anti-Muslim website gushed that Irving “is being called ‘ground zero’ in the battle to prevent Islamic law from gaining a foothold, no matter how small, in the U.S. legal system” and hailed her as “the mayor who stood up to the Muslim Brotherhood.”

    That led to support for a bill introduced in the Texas State Legislature banning the use of foreign law, which its sponsor made clear was targeted at least in part at these “sharia courts.” The Irving City Council went out of its way to enact a resolution supporting the state bill. It was enacted in June. One of the City Council members who opposed the bill — William “Bill” Mahone, who “denounced the vote and urged Irving to ’embrace the Muslims’” — then lost his seat in the city election “by a wide margin.” I’ve spoken to Muslim groups in Irving and there is a small but thriving community there, which in turn has produced intense anti-Muslim animus.

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  2. Yeah, sounds like Irving.

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  3. I mistakenly thought this issue was put to bed when the police released the boy without charges. However I just learned this morning that the school suspended him for three days anyway! Ostensibly for the offense of embarrassing them on the national stage, because every other excuse has been rebutted. What an utter lack of shame or decency...or self-awareness.

    Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised given that the school system suffered an Islamic panic in response to a kooky chain email about four years ago and undertook a paid investigation of its own curriculum to make sure it wasn't pro-Islamic....

    http://www.slate.com/blogs/schooled/2015/09/16/ahmed_mohamed_s_school_it_was_afraid_of_islam_well_before_it_thought_a_clock.html

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  4. Here's the link to the article in a usable form:

    http://goo.gl/wYBqOn

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  5. NPR reported this morning that Ahmed is changing schools.

    http://www.npr.org/2015/09/17/441063191/texas-teen-to-transfer-schools-after-arrest-over-homemade-clock

    Hey, the kid's not the idiot here.

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