Personally, i wasn't surprised at the display of racially-biased fear at the sight of device that appears to a bystander to look like a bomb. People are people.

But why did it need to lead to arrest, hand cuffs, finger printing after an interview and a casual examination of the device clearly demonstrated it was a clock (there was an engineering teacher who could easily collaborate)? It was an outright excessive reaction to further compound what was a regrettable mistake.