your the one saying you would sue if that was your kid. If your going to throw it out there then your fair game. I wasn't questioning your parenting skills just your judgment in threatening to sue because this kid was put in handcuffs.. Quit being so sensitive and nice language. Really gives your argument backup. When I was in high school I had a police officer put a gun to my head. I was blowing insulation into attic's and we went to work at 2:00 in the morning. Most of the time it was in new homes but a house had partially burned and it was in an existing neighborhood. Im feeding the machine when I look down and a police officer motions me out of the back of the box truck. As soon as I land he rams me against the truck with my head pinned and a gun 4 inches from my head. I did exactly as the officer said and once he saw we weren't stealing he calmed down. Yes I was cuffed until they called our office and verified our work assignment. And so was my partner when he came out of the attic. I guess if I was you I should have sued. But I put myself in the place of the person who didn't know I wasn't a criminal and took no chances. I didn't do one thing wrong but yet I had a gun to my head. This kid got put in handcuffs. OMG that officer went way too far not. Did the cuffs break his arm. I take it you have never been in a tense situation or fear for your life. Police officers have a tough job. This is a crazy world now where kids grow up fast. Blame everyone but the kid right. Lets make that kid a hero to the people who think little junior had his feelings hurt. What if it had been a bomb and little junior had blown your kid up. Would you be suing the teacher and school for doing nothing?
but that's not what you were talking about. You were talking about how teachers should be able to know what is a bomb and isn't. And I can tell you this. Even bomb squad people don't know sometimes that is why they take no chances. And teachers don't have at their convenience the tools bomb squads do to determine. And your talking about how smart this kid is. If he was that smart he should have known better. The guy years ago from Berkeley that was exploding all those bombs was a former UC Berkeley professor. The smartest of the smart.
I was thinking about this the other day, and it is 100% paranoid speculation, but.... Just after 9/11 a friend of my wife's, while we were in Des Moines, relayed a chilling tale. Earlier that summer she and her daughter had been on a flight out of Boston. She was a senior executive and was in first class. A guy, also in first class was terribly obnoxious, and several times on the flight, got out of his seat, across the isle from them, and more or less, walked the stewardess back up the isle to the cockpit, for some unknown reason. They paid no attention, at first, but this occurred several times. It seemed strange and a little alarming, but the flight landed and they went on their way, not giving it much more thought. When the photos of the 9/11 terrorists were released, and if you remember, they were all over the news at the time, she was stunned to see the guy on their plane was the Mohammed Atta guy, the leader, of the terrorist. And it turns out the flight back from Boston they had been on was one of the flights that crashed into the WTC in September. They were unknowingly, apparently witnesses to a dress rehearsal. Of course, she called the Des Moines office of the FBI immediately and was interviewed extensively. What if the little rag head had been on a dress rehearsal, as well??????
They certainly did dress rehearsals for 9/11. I knew an American pilot who recognized two of the highjackers from one of his flights the week before 9/11. They had asked for a "tour" of the cockpit, no less. He didn't let them, and thought it was weird at the time (and terrifying after that.)
It's exactly what I've been talking about. It doesn't take a Philadelphia lawyer to figure out after a second glance that this isn't a bomb. Further, if they really believed it was a bomb then why not evacuate the school and call in a bomb squad? I'll tell you why.....because they knew better but decided they were going to teach the kid a "lesson" and make an example of him. The kid is smart. He's also 14. The guy from Berkely was actually building bombs and blowing people up; the kid was not. There's your difference.
This is perfectly acceptable until you see that even after they learned that it was not a bomb, they continued to treat the situation as if he brought a bomb to school. At that point it ceases to be erring to caution and just plain ignorance and arrogance. Also, in this day and age are teachers not briefed on things like recognizing symptoms of drug users, firearm safety, what a bomb might look like, etc? There is a lot of material out there for free, so there really isn't any excuse.
Except there are no explosives or anything that looks like explosives anywhere in the picture. Incendiary material is pretty important in bomb-making I hear.
Teachers are briefed on all sorts of shit. Why, however, should we be expected to be experts in bomb detection? My principal would have wanted a device that looked like that dismantled (not invented) clock reported to the front office. There were some strange decisions made after the device was reported, but no, I do not think that the teachers have likely been given training on bomb detection. In the future, it's going to be harder and harder to find teachers if, in addition to actually teaching, they must also become weapons experts.
