Irving, TX ninth grader arrested after taking homemade clock to school (opens in new tab)

I cannot tell you how mad this made me. The racism, the refusal to appreciate the nerdy kid, the police idiocy, the bad teacher, the horrible administration. 5 police officers interrogating one 14-year-old who just likes tinkering because he brought in a clock.

Does anybody know a good way (that is, polite and unlikely to be percieved as menacing) to send something to the family? I'd totally go in on a giant AdaFruit gift certificate for the young fellow. Or a scholarship fund. Or both.

I am just baffled at the ignorance. Not only does everybody in that school automatically assumed it was a bomb, but the police has the audacity to: "They led Ahmed into a room where four other police officers waited. He said an officer he’d never seen before leaned back in his chair and remarked: “Yup. That’s who I thought it was.”"

The engineering teacher advising him to not show anyone else is just sad. He just wants to show people his passion, but everybody else's inability to for one second think that maybe this kid has great potential, rather think that he made a bomb, because what else could he possibly be making. This is infuriating.

You can buy your own damn clock kit on Amazon for $6! http://www.amazon.com/Electronic-Production-Suite-Clock-…/…/

How are these people in these positions?

This experience, may make the boy turn into a terrorist- -being racially profiled..I could imagine someone being like "well they think I'm already a terrorist, might as well not let them down...' -- I mean seriously -- I hope the cops, and principle have their arses sued off for this crap.

Foley artists and prop guys are so responsible for this (obviously not morally).

Guns don't "sound like guns" (pew! pew! click!), bombs don't "look like bombs" (red dynamite strapped to a modernist circuit board with dramatic technicolor wiring), drowning doesn't "look like drowning" (dramatic flailing & yelling) etc. etc.

"Mr. X, it's like you're not a real teacher! You haven't even given a dramatic monologue about believing in myself yet!"

> "He just wants to invent good things for mankind,” said Ahmed’s father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, who immigrated from Sudan and occasionally returns there to run for president.

Wait... run for president?

You can imagine how proud he was, he really wanted to show off his clock. I can think of a few times I got shut down by bored adults when I wanted to present something I built.

But he wasn't met with boredom, he was met with an arrest. Police still threatening charges.

Anil Dash started a document for folks to show support. He says he'll be in touch with the family soon.

https://twitter.com/anildash/status/644000575617658881

Would you like to see a kid wearing NASA t-shirt and handcuffs? Go ahead... https://twitter.com/anildash/status/644020453724585984

You know it's bad when real headlines sound like they're from the Onion...

Irving; that's all you really need to know. In Plano or at the Dallas magnet school downtown he'd have been celebrated.

Irving, TX's Irving high school[1] has 34 athletic coaches[2], so you can see their priorities. I can't find any course descriptions on their site, other than a few online courses. ("Web design - Learn industry-standard software including Adobe Fireworks, Dreamweaver, and Flash with helpful videos.")

[1] http://www.irvingisd.net/Domain/8 [2] http://www.irvingisd.net/Page/6032

I hope that this arrest does not go onto his records and create some red tape nightmare for the future.

Poor kid. Idiot adults.

Idiots vote for Trump to "make America great again" and when a smart American kids tries to build something they arrest him.