Police Drop Case Against Kid Who Made Clock, While Mayor Worries About The Impact... On The Police

by Mike Masnick
Techdirt
Sep. 17, 2015

This morning we wrote about the ridiculous situation down in Irving Texas where school officials and the local police totally freaked out and overreacted to a 14 year old student, Ahmed Mohamed, who built a clock in his spare time and showed it to two of his teachers. The story has exploded nationwide, with even President Obama weighing in and inviting Ahmed to the White House. Famed astronaut Chris Hadfield has invited Ahmed to appear on his Generator show. He's been invited to visit Facebook, Google, MIT and probably lots of other places as well.

Seeing all this, it's not surprising that police have closed the case, but are still standing by the whole thing.

On Wednesday, Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd said that the arresting officers quickly determined there was no immediate threat the device would detonate, which is why they did not evacuate the high school. The officers weren't sure if Ahmed had intended to cause alarm, so they took him into custody, Boyd said.

"Our follow-up investigation was to determine whether there was intent created by what the student brought to school, or whether it was just a naive set of circumstances, with him not recognizing the suspicious nature of the situation," Boyd said at a news conference.

Asked if a white student would have been treated differently, he said, "Our reaction would have been the same either way."

Irving's mayor, Beth Van Duyne, who made national news earlier this year for some ridiculous anti-Islamic slurs, has finally weighed in on the issue on Facebook, posting a comment that focused entirely on bogus claims about safety and (originally) concluding it by calling on people not to use this against the police:

I do not fault the school or the police for looking into what they saw as a potential threat. They have procedures to run when a possible threat or criminal act is discovered. They follow these procedures in the sole interest of protecting our children and school personnel. To the best of my knowledge, they followed protocol for investigating whether this was an attempt to bring a Hoax Bomb to a school campus. Following this investigation, Irving PD has stated no charges will be filed against the student. I hope this incident does not serve as a deterrent against our police and school personnel from maintaining the safety and security of our schools.

After a bunch of people noted that she said absolutely nothing about Ahmed, or his creativity or education, she went back in and edited the statement to actually mention him (you can click on the "edited" line up top to see the original) which did not include the following:

As a parent, I agree that if this happened to my child I would be very upset. It is my sincere desire that Irving ISD students are encouraged to use their creativity, develop innovations and explore their interests in a manner that fosters higher learning. Hopefully, we can all learn from this week's events and the student, who has obvious gifts, will not feel at all discouraged from pursuing his talent in electronics and engineering.

Yes, and to actually do that, you would think it would require actually addressing how and why this happened in the first place. Which would mean actually mentioning him in your original statement, rather than later, after everyone's called you out for not mentioning it.