Muslim student bring clock he made to school and get arrested

This is a case of liberals being idiots....it's right up there with suspending a child over a crayon drawing of a gun because of the school's "zero tolerance," or suspending a child for sexual harassment because he kissed a girl on the cheek.

Laura
 
It is stupid that the kid can't bring clocks to school anymore. How will he get help on creating the clocks?
 
Lau2046 said:
This is a case of liberals being idiots....it's right up there with suspending a child over a crayon drawing of a gun because of the school's "zero tolerance," or suspending a child for sexual harassment because he kissed a girl on the cheek.

Laura
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Conservatives being idiots as well - no difference.

At Christian private school, you could get suspended for kiss someone and their policies are set by conservatives.

In most public schools, the PDA (public display of affection) isn't permitted and you can get consequence, such as detention hall, Saturday school or suspension, even it wasn't liberal idea.
 
Update: Student is transferring to another school.

The week started pretty terribly for Texas high school student Ahmed Mohamed. On Monday, the teen, who is Muslim, brought to school a clock that he was proud to have made on his own and was arrested for what police initially -- and falsely -- said was a hoax bomb.

But by mid-week, his face and name were splashed across traditional and social media, and he'd received thousands of tweets and Facebook posts of encouragement. President Barack Obama invited him to the White House and praised his love of science. Leaders at Reddit and Twitter offered him internships. Google executives said they were reserving Ahmed a spot at their weekend science fair and MIT asked him to visit the campus.

Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg invited him to visit the company's headquarters, posting, "Having the skill and ambition to build something cool should lead to applause, not arrest. The future belongs to people like Ahmed."

The hashtags #IStandWithAhmed and #EngineersForAhmed garnered hundreds of thousands of posts and tweets.

By Thursday, more details of the 14-year-old's arrest in Irving, Texas, came to light.

In an interview late Wednesday with MSNBC's Chris Hayes, Ahmed said he was pulled out of class at MacArthur High School by his principal and five police officers and taken to a room where he was questioned for about an hour and a half.

He said he asked the adults if he could call his parents.

"They told me 'No, you can't call your parents,'" Ahmed said. "'You're in the middle of an interrogation at the moment.' They asked me a couple of times, 'Is it a bomb?' and I answered a couple of times, 'It's a clock.'"

"I felt like I was a criminal," the teenager said. "I felt like I was a terrorist. I felt like all the names I was called."

Hayes asked what he meant.

In middle school, Ahmed said, he had been called "bombmaker" and a "terrorist."

"Just because of my race and my religion," he said, adding that when he walked into the room where he was questioned, an officer reclined in a chair and remarked, "That's who I thought it was."

"I took it to mean he was pointing at me for what I am, my race," the freshman explained.

Ahmed is not going back to MacArthur -- he's transferring to another school, his father Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed said. The family has not yet picked a new school for Ahmed, he said, and is exploring options inside and outside of the country.

'Scared but happy now'

Mohamed, who immigrated to the United States from Sudan, believes that his son was targeted because of his brown skin color and his religion.

The teen has never been in trouble, Mohamed told CNN. "My son's name is Mohamed -- people just think Muslims are terrorists but we are peaceful, we are not that way," he said.

He was furious that the school didn't contact him right away to tell him his son had been arrested. Instead, he first learned of what happened when police called him.

Mohamed said he rushed to the station and saw his son "surrounded by five police and he was handcuffed."

The school later suspended Ahmed for three days, his father said.

Mohamed said his son was at first embarrassed by what happened, but then was lifted and emboldened by the widespread support he has received.

Ahmed also appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Thursday.

"I was scared at the moment, but now I feel really happy," he said. "I'm getting all this support from all over the world. And the support isn't just for me but for everyone who has been through this. I will fight for you if you can't stand up for yourself."

He said he was most excited to hear from MIT. "I dream of going there," he said.

And he's thrilled to go to the White House.

"I hope to see him soon," Ahmed said of Obama.

Irving police had held onto the clock as evidence, but on Thursday, they told CNN that it's ready for Ahmed to pick it up.

Asked what his plans for the future are, he told GMA, "That clock was part of my future."

Mayor defends police, school

Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne defended the school district and police.

"I do not fault the school or the police for looking into what they saw as a potential threat," she said in a statement. They all followed procedures, she said.

Van Duyne has had controversial interactions with Irving's Muslim community, most notably when she supported a resolution that would prohibit "foreign law," including Islamic or sharia law, CNN affiliate KTVT reported.

Ahmed has said he brought the device to school to impress his teachers, but one became concerned about the device and reported him to the principal.

Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd said authorities were able to determine quickly that it wasn't a bomb, but they investigated Ahmed to determine whether he brought the device to school with the intention of creating alarm. It is against Texas law to use or possess a fake bomb with the intent to make someone believe that it is an explosive.

Ahmed told investigators it was a clock, but he was led away in handcuffs after he wouldn't say much more on the matter, Boyd said. Further investigation revealed details -- such as his making the clock to impress teachers -- that led police to decide not to pursue charges, Boyd said.

Boyd told CNN's "New Day" on Friday that his officers "made the best decision they thought that they could make at that time, based on the information that they had."

"Of course we will review this," Boyd said. "Of course we want to go back and look at this and all the decision points and all the alternatives and make sure we give our officers the best guidance we possibly can, because this won't be the last controversial decision that they have to make."

A spokeswoman for the Irving Independent School District said that the way the teen's experience has been described in media reports is "unbalanced."

She declined to explain why, citing the need to protect a student's privacy, but said more details would be revealed if the family gives written permission to discuss the incident.
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http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/17/us/texas-student-ahmed-muslim-clock-bomb/
 
Calvin said:
Update: Student is transferring to another school.



http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/17/us/texas-student-ahmed-muslim-clock-bomb/
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:ty: I was going to update this story . I been thinking that we need to do a better job in teaching kids today b/c tomorrow they're going to be our leaders , doctors etc. Now we may have just driven a bring intelligence boy away and this will our lost . I don't understand why they handcuff the kid , what harm could he had done , the police had the clock and saw that it was not a bomb .
 
If they quickly determined it was not a bomb, Ahmed made no threat that it was a bomb and the police pursued no charges then by what reason did the school suspend him? Also, if they truely thought it was a bomb then why didn't they evacuate the school?

Honestly, unless it was strapped to a pipe or something how does a handful of electronics look like a bomb?
 
I just seen this on news he an internet hero apparently been invited to White House Google Apple ..This action did America no favours Aljeezra news laughing saying going be lot of teenage boys walking around with clocks.No panic when Muslim buy clocks.
 
jonnyghost said:
If they quickly determined it was not a bomb, Ahmed made no threat that it was a bomb and the police pursued no charges then by what reason did the school suspend him? Also, if they truely thought it was a bomb then why didn't they evacuate the school?

Honestly, unless it was strapped to a pipe or something how does a handful of electronics look like a bomb?
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I agree with you and this why I don't understand there were 5 policemen still there when they knew the clock was not 'bomb'. I really feel they violated the boy rights by not letting him have his parents or some other adult with him. The poor kid he was so proud of what he made and end being treated like an ISIS terrorist !
 
He said he asked the adults if he could call his parents.

"They told me 'No, you can't call your parents,'" Ahmed said. "'You're in the middle of an interrogation at the moment.' They asked me a couple of times, 'Is it a bomb?' and I answered a couple of times, 'It's a clock.'"
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I hope the parents sue the police department for this alone... Seems to me that this is illegal to not allow him, an underage individual, to not have his parents present... or even a lawyer!

The police officer who said "that's who i thought it was" isn't very bright either- representing the Irving police department that's going to reflect badly (for most- I'm sure there are a few people who are 'cheering' them on for that).
 
At least he is in good company--

http://abcnews.go.com/US/florida-gi...tances-ahmed-mohamed-advice/story?id=33838741

(video supports captions- non automated)

A Florida teen who was arrested in 2013 under remarkably similar circumstances as Ahmed Mohamed -- who was cuffed when Texas school officials mistook a homemade clock for a bomb -- has some advice for him.

"When I read the story about Ahmed...I said 'Oh my gosh, how could this happen again?'" Kiera Wilmot of Lakeland, Florida told ABC News today. "[In my case] sometimes I think it was racial profiling and sometimes I think it was just ignorance."

Ahmed's case has sparked an uproar and he was invited by President Obama to the White House. The school says the community is standing behind the actions of its teachers and officials.

Wilmot, now 19, said that in April 2013 she brought a science project to school in Bartow, Florida -- a makeshift volcano that she was very excited to show her teacher.

"He said he needed to approve it first, so I brought it in thinking he literally needed to see it in person," she said.

She said the project was "more advanced" than a "baking soda and vinegar volcano" and her classmates asked to see how it worked.

Wilmot said she activated the volcano outside the cafeteria of Bartow High School that morning, when the lid popped off and the bottom of the device began to smoke. No students were hurt and no school property was damaged.

Soon after, the then 16-year-old was approached by the dean of students.

"He said 'What's going on?'" Wilmot recalled. I said 'Oh, I was just showing my science project to my friends."

Wilmot said when her science teacher was approached by a school official, he said there were no science experiments assigned to his class that week.

Wilmot was then brought to the juvenile detention center where she was arrested on bomb charges.

"I cried as soon as they told me," she said. "As they were fingerprinting and taking mugshots I said 'Oh my gosh, I'm an actual criminal. I know I didn’t do anything wrong but I felt like I had to believe I did something wrong."

Wilmot, now an engineering student at Florida Polytechnic, said as a result of the ordeal she was suspended for 10 days.

"This incident involved a former student," Polk County Public Schools said in a statement. "We respect her right to privacy and wish her the best in her future. This incident did not change our school district's code of conduct. We have no further comment."

But on May 22, exactly one month after the incident, charges were dropped.

Like Ahmed, Wilmot's story captured the attention of national media and landed her a scholarship to Space Camp.

Wilmot said Ahmed's arrest brought back the fear she felt that on the day she was handcuffed and booked on bomb charges.

"I thought 'He's only in ninth grade,'" she said. "He has to go back to that school and go through four more years of people asking him 'Hey, aren’t you the kid who made the bomb?'"

A spokesperson from MacArthur High School where Ahmed attends said they are willing to welcome the teen back as a student following his three-day suspension, which concluded today.

Ahmed told news reporters during Wednesday's press conference that he's made the decision to transfer schools.

"I think that's a very brave thing to do," Wilmot said. "When I went back [to school], people would say 'You should've been in jail, you're a terrorist.' For the most past, I tried to ignore it as best I could.

"I'd tell Ahmed he's got to keep his head up," she added. "He's got to show them that he's not going to let this ignorance get him down."

Wilmot said she believes her and Ahmed's stories could bring awareness to children being arrested on school grounds.

"I really would like to meet him," she said. "I'd tell him, 'Let's start a movement.'"
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I think that's shame when white children are allowed to be creative while non-white kids can't express their creativity without getting in a serious trouble...
 
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