Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Kosh on January 16, 2010, 06:32:26 pm
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Just wow (http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/jan/15/students-evacuated-school-chollas-view/)
SAN DIEGO — Students were evacuated from Millennial Tech Magnet Middle School in the Chollas View neighborhood Friday afternoon after an 11-year-old student brought a personal science project that he had been making at home to school, authorities said.
Maurice Luque, spokesman for the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department, said the student had been making the device in his home garage. A vice principal saw the student showing it to other students at school about 11:40 a.m. Friday and was concerned that it might be harmful, and San Diego police were notified.
The school, which has about 440 students in grades 6 to 8 and emphasizes technology skills, was initially put on lockdown while authorities responded.
Luque said the project was made of an empty half-liter Gatorade bottle with some wires and other electrical components attached. There was no substance inside.
When police and the Metro Arson Strike Team responded, they also found electrical components in the student's backpack, Luque said. After talking to the student, it was decided about 1 p.m. to evacuate the school as a precaution while the item was examined. Students were escorted to a nearby playing field, and parents were called and told they could come pick up their children.
A MAST robot took pictures of the device and X-rays were evaluated. About 3 p.m., the device was determined to be harmless, Luque said.
Luque said the project was intended to be a type of motion-detector device.
Both the student and his parents were "very cooperative" with authorities, Luque said. He said fire officials also went to the student's home and checked the garage to make sure items there were neither harmful nor explosive.
"There was nothing hazardous at the house," Luque said.
The student will not be prosecuted, but authorities were recommending that he and his parents get counseling, the spokesman said. The student violated school policies, but there was no criminal intent, Luque said.
"There will be no (criminal) charges whatsoever," Luque said.
Police and fire officials also will not seek to recover costs associated with responding to the incident, the spokesman said.
Luque said both the student and his parents were extremely upset.
"He was very shaken by the whole situation, as were his parents," Luque said.
The school is located on Carolina Lane near Hilltop Drive.
Adjacent Gompers Charter Middle School was not affected during the incident, police Sgt. Ray Battrick said.
Millennial Middle School opened in fall 2008. It is part of the San Diego Unified School District.
Let me get this straight, he built a cool project on a budget, and he is going to get counseling for it? That is absurd. It's truely a sad day when we start accusing our own elementry school students of being terrorists.......
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What school policies did he violate? Is there a ban on wires in a bottle?
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There is a ban on making the authorities look stupid by leading them to believe that you could be carrying a bomb.
Boing Boing had a good image here:
(http://craphound.com/images/notabombsticker.jpg)
How the hell they got the idea that an empty bottle with a few wires inside could be an explosive device so dangerous that the school had to be evacuated is beyond me. The stupid, it burns.
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I don't know why it was recommended the parents and the child get counseling. I mean, it was a school focused on technology, so the child was probably applying knowledge learned in the classroom to an at-home project. The school should be glad that student is interested in technology enough to build a motion detector in his spare time.
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this is america, we want our kids to grow up to be stupid, ignorant, slaves
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this is america, we want our kids to grow up to be stupid, ignorant, slaves
And we prove how successful we are at doing so all the time
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I had some... interesting... experiences similar to this BS during my 6th grade. The end results of this were in me being home schooled up until high school. And the crime? Get this: drawing medieval weaponry. :wtf:
A lot of these early grade school admins really seem to have some strange problems with judgement. I heard a while back that a female elementary school student brought in a discharged shot gun shell - a discharged shell... you know, empty/no danger what-so-ever? - and got expelled for it. For goodness sake, she probably found the silly thing on the side of the road and showed it to her teacher! What a load of horse sh*t...
To this matter I will cite the classic film, "Uncle Buck." I really have to applaud the character for telling the assistant priciple off for her charges against his niece. I'd link to YouTube, but there were no examples of the clip in high enough quality to warrant a posting here. However, you search yourself, look for something to due with "Uncle Buck" and "school."
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You know, it's bull**** like this that makes anarchy seem reasonable.
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Right, I appreciate the headteachers point of view here.
It's a teacher, likely no idea what a bomb would look like.
Better safe than sorry is better EVERY time when it comes to IEDs.
I know this to be a fact and this has saved my life seven times.
The counselling isn't stated as being to stop the kid blowing up anything, it's more likely to calm everyone down after an potential wrongful arrest.
I'd make an EDUCATED guess that the detector was some sort of trembler switch which could be mistaken for components.
No-one was seriously hurt and no charges were made.
This is just rubber necking.
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^^^ Dekker, whilst completely sober. A rare sight. Observe its magnificence.
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Right, I appreciate the headteachers point of view here.
It's a teacher, likely no idea what a bomb would look like.
Better safe than sorry is better EVERY time when it comes to IEDs.
I know this to be a fact and this has saved my life seven times.
The counselling isn't stated as being to stop the kid blowing up anything, it's more likely to calm everyone down after an potential wrongful arrest.
I'd make an EDUCATED guess that the detector was some sort of trembler switch which could be mistaken for components.
No-one was seriously hurt and no charges were made.
This is just rubber necking.
The thing is the bottle was EMPTY (no liquids no solids), so even if it had some kind of flammable gas, you can't pack enough into a small PLASTIC gatorade bottle to do much more than singe your eyebrows if your standing next to it. Not worth the hubub, not one bit. If it was full of liquids of some kind or even a solid then there would be just cause, but there wasn't.
And like I said, when we start assuming our elementry school students are terrorists, then it shows how far we really have fallen as a nation.
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If I saw a kid with a device like that, I would not walk over and ask if there was any liquid in it. Mostly cause I would be afraid the answer would be yes.
If I saw a kid with a device like that, I would most certainly tell the principal. And they would probably call the police.
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But dude, IT'S A KID.
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But dude, IT'S A KID.
Yea cause kids never get mad and try to hurt people at school. Ever.
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Yeah, cuz kids always try to hurt people with freaking bombs.
:doubt:
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Actually homemade bombs are a pretty common way for kids to attack (or at least try to) their school.
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I gotta dispute the 'common' there.
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Actually homemade bombs are a pretty common way for kids to attack (or at least try to) their school.[citation needed]
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A vice principal saw the student showing it to other students at school about 11:40 a.m. Friday and was concerned that it might be harmful, and San Diego police were notified.
That's the problem, right there in a nutshell.
From the viewpoint of the VP, it assumes either conspiracy or idiocy.
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Actually homemade bombs are a pretty common way for kids to attack (or at least try to) their school.[citation needed]
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A vice principal saw the student showing it to other students at school about 11:40 a.m. Friday and was concerned that it might be harmful, and San Diego police were notified.
That's the problem, right there in a nutshell.
From the viewpoint of the VP, it assumes either conspiracy or idiocy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school-related_attacks
I see quite a few bomb attempts in that list. And I'm almost sure that list isn't comprehensive.
The problem is the VP saw an item and didn't say "that can't be a bomb" and walked away?
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But dude, IT'S A KID.
How do you know the kid made it?
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Actually homemade bombs are a pretty common way for kids to attack (or at least try to) their school.[citation needed]
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A vice principal saw the student showing it to other students at school about 11:40 a.m. Friday and was concerned that it might be harmful, and San Diego police were notified.
That's the problem, right there in a nutshell.
From the viewpoint of the VP, it assumes either conspiracy or idiocy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school-related_attacks
I see quite a few bomb attempts in that list. And I'm almost sure that list isn't comprehensive.
The problem is the VP saw an item and didn't say "that can't be a bomb" and walked away?
Even if there are ten times as many attacks as listed there, the behavior is quite uncommon.
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What ever happened to the good old days when you actually had fund making fun little explosions as projects for science class?
Oh and as far as the Gatorade bottle goes a little gas can go a long way if ti's under pressure and plastic bottles hold a lot of pressure. Even filled with only compressed air they can make quite a ban and some send shards of plastic flying. Don't believe me fill one with some chips of dry ice, seal it and wait (preferably at a good distance).
Guess we should ban all plastic containers from school now too just in case.......
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I think you may be confusing "kids who want to attack their school often use bombs" with "kids often attack schools with bombs"
If a kid decides to go all kill crazy, there are really only 3 ways to do it: shooting, stabbing, and bombing.
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I have no qualms about this event. Everyone involved acted as they are expected to in a situation like that, and no harm was done.
The VP saw a suspect device and activated an emergency response. Any teacher should do this. I'd be extremely worried if they didn't.
The device was not harmless. The student was let off, and given counseling for trauma incurred by the event. While not necessary, it demonstrates heart in their police force.
IMO, this was the best possible outcome for this situation.
And the rest of the school got to leave early.
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Wait, the device wasn't harmless?
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what harm was it capable of doing? from the article I gathered it detected motion and nothing more.
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I don't like sacrificing freedom for security. I don't like letting the terrorists win. I don't like discouraging creativity. But I would like a school full of blown up little kids even less.
I know it's ****ty when little things like this end up causing what seem like huge overreactions, but sometimes you just can't take any chances. Better to err on the side of caution.
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Didn't the student tell the VP "It's just a motion sensor,"? What's wrong with the VP confiscating the "bomb", ('You can have this back at the end of the day,' :P ) Closing down a school over an eleven year old kid with a plastic bottle is plain ridiculous. And if this school encourages technological prowess or whatever, wouldn't someone on the staff have been able to tell it wasn't a bomb?
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How would the vp know what a motion sensor is, that's for science or electronic products teachers. :)
Oh and Kosh, i'd rather not get into a discussion of how 'complete' the imaginary explosive device was as it has no bearing on the end result or the motivation behind said actions. Also who would dismiss PLASTIC as a modern carriage medium?
;wtf;
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The counselling isn't stated as being to stop the kid blowing up anything, it's more likely to calm everyone down after an potential wrongful arrest.
Yet that's a stupid way to try to calm everyone down. A simple admission from the that vice principal that what he presumably did was overreaction, pretty silly and that the kid didn't really do anything wrong would do the same thing, and would be a lot faster, cheaper and effective. No one needs counseling for a wrongful arrest like that unless the people responsible refuse to admit that it was in fact a wrongful arrest.
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They already did that.
AND THERE WAS NO ARREST!
Read. . . . Read read.
Wait, the device wasn't harmless?
I think there was a typo in that post ;)
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After talking to the student, it was decided about 1 p.m. to evacuate the school as a precaution while the item was examined.
Empty half-liter Gatorade bottle? I could understand canceling a class, but uh.. :doubt:
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That's exactly the point i'm making.
I wouldn't have been empty. It would have had at least three large wire contacts and a small electronics package fixed to the base or inside somewhere.
I've actually looked for a clear image so i could show you what i mean, but i can only find a basic prefab compnent in situ, in the context that i worked with them.
http://www.nolandmines.com/minestype72ap.htm
It's better than nothing, but backs up the point that the only place i can find an image of the component is in a landmine. So A non-expert is right to be weary. 3rd pic down (the small white cylinder and bar contact) if you imagine the bottle as being empty with the bar most likely inside instead then you'd have a rough idea.
http://www.nolandmines.com/minestype72ap.htm
To the lamen teacher in stab-shoot-splode-town usa it would have been absolutely suspect.
I'm not saying it to be anti american, but let's face it. There's a history of violence.
I can't really see this going anywhere as it appeared to be a speculative / clarificative first post.
Let me get this straight, he built a cool project on a budget, and he is going to get counseling for it? That is absurd. It's truely a sad day when we start accusing our own elementry school students of being terrorists.......
Unless there's a real result kosh was after as his question was answered in the subject matter he quoted... i'm gonna ask Lady Command to step in.
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Unless there's a real result kosh was after as his question was answered in the subject matter he quoted... i'm gonna ask Lady Command to step in.
I don't see any need to lock it.
If I saw a kid with a device like that, I would not walk over and ask if there was any liquid in it.
Normally you can see if there is liquid in it.
Oh and Kosh, i'd rather not get into a discussion of how 'complete' the imaginary explosive device was as it has no bearing on the end result or the motivation behind said actions. Also who would dismiss PLASTIC as a modern carriage medium?
I wasn't dismissing plastic itself, I was dismissing small and empty mostly. Steel>plastic when it comes to holding compressed gasses of any kind. I also dismissed the idea that we should treat an 11 year old as a terrorist. Baghdad != a well off middle school in california.
I see quite a few bomb attempts in that list. And I'm almost sure that list isn't comprehensive.
Looking at the list there were 5-6 or so actual bomb attacks on schools in the US in the last 50 years, and half of them were in tandem with school shootings (like columbine). Of the foiled plots, only 2 of these involved bombs and also involved not only lots of bombs but one or more guns as well. Based on this, if a kid is going to make a bomb, likely it's either a big one or lots and lots of little ones combined with guns. I'm not seeing any precedent for a kid making one small bomb at all in the US. Odds are far more likely that you'll be shot or stabbed at school that blown to bits.
It's better than nothing, but backs up the point that the only place i can find an image of the component is in a landmine. So A non-expert is right to be weary. 3rd pic down (the small white cylinder and bar contact) if you imagine the bottle as being empty with the bar most likely inside instead then you'd have a rough idea.
http://www.nolandmines.com/minestype72ap.htm
That is a good point, but how easy is it to get that kind of solid explosive in the US? In all the school incidents in the US, I don't recall seeing one that involved second hand military grade munitions.........
EDIT: I'll even quote the two bomb related foiled plots in the US:
17-year-old Joshua Magee was arrested in the parking lot of Malcolm High School after a school staff member, who saw the youth drinking liquor and putting on a black overcoat, called police. A search of Magee's car produced a bolt-action rifle, 20 bombs and a note stating the he wanted to injure everyone at the school except for three friends. Magee, to whom school paid close attention after it was reported to faculty that he was experimenting with explosives at home, was charged with attempted murder.[410]
Jeremy Getman, 18, planned a school attack at Southside High School but it was foiled after students told a teacher that he was carrying weapons. He carried 14 pipe bombs, three smaller bombs, a propane tank, a sawed-off shotgun, and a .22 caliber pistol into the school by a duffel bag and also a book bag full of ammunition. On December 17, 2001, he was sentenced to 8 1/2 years.[409]
As for the ones that happened, there was a bombing in 1970 at a university, a bombing at a secondary school in san mateo (when they searched they found a bunch of other bombs he brought to school), columbine, a bombing at a hostage crisis in 1986 in wyoming, and a bombing in Bath, Michigan in 1927. That's it.
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The mine and its explosive content irellavant, I was trying to find a pic of what i believe the kid was truing to make. For all i know he could have been making an IR reflector or a remote influene gate.
I can't comment further on the potential mis-identification of the kids evice unless i see a picture of the bottle..
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The mine and its explosive content irellavant, I was trying to find a pic of what i believe the kid was truing to make. For all i know he could have been making an IR reflector or a remote influene gate.
I can't comment further on the potential mis-identification of the kids evice unless i see a picture of the bottle..
Explosives do matter, because in the school bombings I've read about none of them used military grade, all of it was homemade, cobbled together from whatever stuff they could get at their homes. The point is out and out school bombings (not involving guns) are extremely rare, with only 4 happening in the past hundred years.
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Actually homemade bombs are a pretty common way for kids to attack (or at least try to) their school.[citation needed]
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A vice principal saw the student showing it to other students at school about 11:40 a.m. Friday and was concerned that it might be harmful, and San Diego police were notified.
That's the problem, right there in a nutshell.
From the viewpoint of the VP, it assumes either conspiracy or idiocy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school-related_attacks
I see quite a few bomb attempts in that list. And I'm almost sure that list isn't comprehensive.
I notice that most of the younger age group listed tends to use firearms or knives.
The problem is the VP saw an item and didn't say "that can't be a bomb" and walked away?
I'd like to schedule an appointment with you, if you have an opening. You see, one of my fillings came out.
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@ Kosh
So you're saying because people are security concious, they should stop taking precautions? You realise that that will affect the numbers right?
Anyway, explosives .....you don't need to make a high yield military grade one to do damage.
I'm pretty much done on the subject as i't a bit close to my heart.
But for the interested parties i'll leave this nugget....
ANFO is a high yield explosive that you can make with fertiliser and oil. I'm not sayoing how it's made or anything. But the components aren't restricted in the slightest and for thirty quids worth you could take out small supermarket. It'd probably fit in a barrel.
An average 2 litre bottle could blow the back half of a large bus off.
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So you're saying because people are security concious, they should stop taking precautions? You realise that that will affect the numbers right?
No, but the "security conciousness" that we have now is insane. 30 years ago would this incident have even happened? There's so much fear in america, and an increasing amount of it is being directed at our children. When we've become afraid of our own shadows, does that mean that we've gone too far?
ANFO is a high yield explosive that you can make with fertiliser and oil. I'm not sayoing how it's made or anything. But the components aren't restricted in the slightest and for thirty quids worth you could take out small supermarket. It'd probably fit in a barrel.
An average 2 litre bottle could blow the back half of a large bus off.
Yeah, I have no doubt that stuff is powerful, but in an appearently empty half liter bottle, then what? If you put fertilizer and oil in a plastic bottle, couldn't you tell?
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afraid of shadows, gone too far..
Too far? Frankly,
Yes.
In this case, no... as all proper measures were taken during the investigations. I think a MAST was a bit much but it is due process as far as the police side goes.
couldn't you tell
I can tell, i''ve got history in the field.
If you put fertilizer and oil in a plastic bottle
And this is why people are prone to reactions based on over-simplification, there is a whole process involved requiring several stages of pre-preeration before they even meet each other.
I was mentioning ANFO in the first place because you asked how kids can get military grade explosives after i posted a picture of a trembler switch inside an unrelated mine.
I never said or implied it was in the bottle.
Did the teacher do the right thing? Absolutely.
Did anyone get in trouble for this? No.
Are the police offering "after care" yes.
Is it mandatory, it doesn't say....Although i'd wager not.
/me is off to the gym.
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Odd article and seems to be written in a sensationalist way. However, I don't see anything wrong happening in the actions. Hats of to Dekker!
I do recall my friends defusing rifle bullets when they were 11 to get the gunpowder. I also do recall breaking firecrackers to get more gunpowder for a single, big, home made (!) firecracker. But that was when I was around 11, and consider that being relatively stupid as we really didn't understand what we were doing and what kind of energies we were trying to control. Saying that 11 year olds cannot construct something extremely dangerous is just, I don't know for a better word but irresponsible.
My pops and a bunch of friends used to defuse land mines and aerial bombs after WWII, them being around 11 year old. The hobby stoped when some of the friends managed to decapitate himself with a land mine. And the home of my father still has a tail of an 200 kg aerial bomb, it was used as a flower pot but has then been modified to be a grill.
Liquid nitrogen in a tightly sealed plastic bottle should be classified as a dangerous explosive already.
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Normally you can see if there is liquid in it.
If it's full and a clear liquid, maybe not. Depends on how close you get.
Looking at the list there were 5-6 or so actual bomb attacks on schools in the US in the last 50 years, and half of them were in tandem with school shootings (like columbine). Of the foiled plots, only 2 of these involved bombs and also involved not only lots of bombs but one or more guns as well. Based on this, if a kid is going to make a bomb, likely it's either a big one or lots and lots of little ones combined with guns. I'm not seeing any precedent for a kid making one small bomb at all in the US. Odds are far more likely that you'll be shot or stabbed at school that blown to bits.
Are you reading the same list I am? Since 1999 (Columbine) there have been 4 attacks that involved bombs and 4 foiled attacks that had bombs. But I think you're being nitpicky over the point. Homemade bombs are a method used by kids in school attacks.
Children carry out school attacks.
Bombs are sometimes a method used in school attacks
Teachers are not bomb techs.
I am a history teacher not a bomb tech or an engineer. This is not a kid who had a bag of skittles or drew a bomb on his notebook. This is a kid who brought in, from home, an enclosed device with wires and electronic components on it. I'm pretty sure you can make a bomb out of a gatorade bottle.
What is a teacher supposed to do when they see a student with an object that could be a bomb?
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You confiscate it, take it to someone who knows what the hell they are talking about (science teacher, maybe? If that fails, sure, call the police), and then when you told by that someone that it is NOT a bomb, you give it back at the end of the day.
You do not need to close the school. (Although, I have to wonder why they waited two hours if they thought it was a bomb to close the school.)
You do not need to have a MAST team come in.
You do not need to send the kid to counseling.
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When we had a bomb threat at my high school last year, they put everyone in the football field and had teachers walk around looking in rooms for anything "suspicious." So I can't help but think this situation was a huge overreaction. :P
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You confiscate it, take it to someone who knows what the hell they are talking about (science teacher, maybe? If that fails, sure, call the police), and then when you told by that someone that it is NOT a bomb, you give it back at the end of the day.
You do not need to close the school. (Although, I have to wonder why they waited two hours if they thought it was a bomb to close the school.)
You do not need to have a MAST team come in.
You do not need to send the kid to counseling.
Take it? Really? What if it's a bomb and he panics and blows it up? Your scenario works great if it's not a bomb. If it is a bomb I've just said "Hey kid, I know you have a bomb." If this is a kid who wants to hurt people, I'm pretty sure he may try to hurt me if he wants to get his plan off.
You know what I'm not gonna do? Hold in my hands the object that may be a bomb.
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You know what else makes exactly as much sense? Not getting on a plane ever because youre afraid it will crash. :P
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Yeah. I can't help but think the odds of a bomb attack are so low that it doesn't justify this.
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Your standard procedure for dealing with items that might be bombs is to pick them up and walk around with them?
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No, my standard procedure is to recognize that the odds that it is a bomb are astronomically low, go up and ask the kid what it is.
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Exactly. And if you think the kid might be lying, take it and call his parents and ask them if they know anything about it.
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And when he lies to you? Or panics?
I have never ever seen any safety regulation, be it school, workplace, or government that says "If you see an object that looks like a bomb, it's very likely it's not a bomb, so pick it up and take it to someone who might know"
Where I work, a college, it says don't touch it. Get people away. Call the police.
Where I go to school, also a college, it also says do not touch the object. Get people away, call the cops.
Everyone says the same thing: if it could be a bomb, don't touch it, because it could be a bomb.
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Exactly. And if you think the kid might be lying, take it and call his parents and ask them if they know anything about it.
And if it is a bomb you've just killed yourself.
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Maybe minorly injured yourself and that kid in this case.
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Let's take a quick look at numbers.
How many students are there in the United States alone? (According to the wiki, just over 54.4 million in just Primary and Secondary schools)
How many devices and/or projects have those students brought in to show everyone? (Let's be conservative and say an average of two a year.)
How many of those devices have turned out to be bombs? (You yourself only brought up EIGHT, the last dozen years.)
What does that work out to? About 1 in 13,600,000.
You might as well say "The odds of a plane crashing are astronomically low. Then again, if it crashes, I just killed myself." Not getting on a plane because of an astronomically low chance of failure is generally considered to be excessively paranoid. Not asking the kid about it because of an astronomically low chance of it being a bomb is, so far on this thread, considered to be excessivly paranoid. Do you see the connection I'm trying to draw for you?
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Exactly. And if you think the kid might be lying, take it and call his parents and ask them if they know anything about it.
And if it is a bomb you've just killed yourself.
Yes, and if you're struck by lightning at that very moment you're probably dead, and guess what! The odds are probably higher!
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Let's take a quick look at numbers.
How many students are there in the United States alone? (According to the wiki, just over 54.4 million in just Primary and Secondary schools)
How many devices and/or projects have those students brought in to show everyone? (Let's be conservative and say an average of two a year.)
How many of those devices have turned out to be bombs? (You yourself only brought up EIGHT, the last dozen years.)
What does that work out to? About 1 in 13,600,000.
You might as well say "The odds of a plane crashing are astronomically low. Then again, if it crashes, I just killed myself." Not getting on a plane because of an astronomically low chance of failure is generally considered to be excessively paranoid. Not asking the kid about it because of an astronomically low chance of it being a bomb is, so far on this thread, considered to be excessivly paranoid. Do you see the connection I'm trying to draw for you?
Oh I do, but it's not the 13,599,99 that bother me. It's the one.
I'm just amazed, schools, governments, workplaces, the police.... everyone says "Don't touch the bomb, get someone who knows what they're doing"
But the people with little to no bomb experience are telling me to pick up the object.
Why is not simply easier to do what the cops say and let them tell me if the item that looks like a bomb is in fact a bomb.
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Exactly. And if you think the kid might be lying, take it and call his parents and ask them if they know anything about it.
And if it is a bomb you've just killed yourself.
Yes, and if you're struck by lightning at that very moment you're probably dead, and guess what! The odds are probably higher!
Run outside in a thunderstorm with a metal pole? What are the odds?
I just love that people are telling to pick up the object because the alternative is far more dangerous: the kid might get embarrassed and I would do exactly what the police want me to do. And really, isn't running the risk of blowing yourself up worth to save the self esteem of one child?
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I haven't advocated picking the device up at any point.
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Because then you get crap like the kid getting sent to counseling for no reason whatsoever as if he did something wrong, and panic attacks that could be averted with a modicum of common sense.
As it stands, it is so statistically improbable, leaning on astronomical, that you might as well not fly on planes if you think that any one of those little projects could be a bomb.
EDIT BEFORE THE POST: Well, run a cost-benefit analysis on approaching the child. If the device is a bomb, sucks for you. That would be a bad thing, we all agree. However, the odds of that happenening are astronomically low. If the device is not a bomb, there is no harm done, and you kept the kid from being the next best thing to arrested for something he did to impress his friends. If self-esteem matters even a tenth as much as all those school counselors say it does, it actually is worth it (IMHO).
Run outside in a thunderstorm with a metal pole? What are the odds?
Without a metal pole, in the middle of a clear sky, you are more likely to get struck by lightning than a kid is to bring a bomb to school. Interestingly enough, I don't picture you as the kind of person who huddles in his house all day for fear of being struck by lightning, even though the risk is greater and doing that completely nullifies the risk. Go figure.
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Walk up to the kid and ask him what it is.
The odds that it is a bomb and that he will, as a result, detonate it are so incredibly low that you would, in fact, be at great risk of death from a car careening out of control, plowing through the school, and hitting you.
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Is that a bomb in your pocket?
Or are you just happy to see me? :nervous:
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Nope, and i'm telling you all NOT to touch it. :p
Any suspect items, don't touch. If you don't feel safe, run a mile. Better tired than dead and rested.
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While not touching it is probably a fine idea, two minutes of conversation with the kid can demonstrate that it's not a bomb to a reasonable degree of satisfaction.
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I completely agree.
I should have added unattended in hindsight.
In this case i imagine the VP to be one of those stubborn holier than thou SOB's. I think we've all met the sort in the past. Even while pleading our respective cases, they'd refuse to hear us out. Normally ending in embarrassment for all involved.
In any case.
This is still rubber-necking and glorification of a non-event.
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Because then you get crap like the kid getting sent to counseling for no reason whatsoever as if he did something wrong, and panic attacks that could be averted with a modicum of common sense.
Your common sense is to avoid doing what the school and police tell you to do and take it into your own hands to determine whether or not the object is a bomb? Really?
As it stands, it is so statistically improbable, leaning on astronomical, that you might as well not fly on planes if you think that any one of those little projects could be a bomb.
EDIT BEFORE THE POST: Well, run a cost-benefit analysis on approaching the child. If the device is a bomb, sucks for you. That would be a bad thing, we all agree. However, the odds of that happenening are astronomically low. If the device is not a bomb, there is no harm done, and you kept the kid from being the next best thing to arrested for something he did to impress his friends. If self-esteem matters even a tenth as much as all those school counselors say it does, it actually is worth it (IMHO).
Basically what you're telling me as a person who isn't trained in bombs to play the odds with my safety and the safety of the people in the school because if I do what I'm told to do, I may hurt a kids feelings?
Without a metal pole, in the middle of a clear sky, you are more likely to get struck by lightning than a kid is to bring a bomb to school. Interestingly enough, I don't picture you as the kind of person who huddles in his house all day for fear of being struck by lightning, even though the risk is greater and doing that completely nullifies the risk. Go figure.
Everyone keeps giving this risk reward debate. You do you know what would happen if this happened. Ignoring if it's a bomb or not. Nothing really good comes of it for me if I don't do what these people did. If it is a bomb, I've put people at risk by not doing what I'm supposed to do. If it wasn't a bomb and I didn't make a scene. If it's found out? I'd probably be fired.
It's the same thing with child abuse, I'm not qualified to tell if it's abuse or not. If it looks like it, no matter what the kid says, up the ladder it goes.
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Walking over and looking at the device is not going to pose a huge risk if the kid's already showing it off.
You can then pass your findings up to someone who will do the same thing - without any need to evacuate the whole school and call in robots two hours later.
This has nothing to do with 'playing the odds'. You play these kind of odds every time you go for a drive, except your chances of killing multiple people are far, far higher.
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I agree with the child abuse parallel, and i agree with General B's pov as well.
Damn, it's hard being objective....but you sure feel good for it.
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Walking over and looking at the device is not going to pose a huge risk if the kid's already showing it off.
You can then pass your findings up to someone who will do the same thing - without any need to evacuate the whole school and call in robots two hours later.
This has nothing to do with 'playing the odds'. You play these kind of odds every time you go for a drive, except your chances of killing multiple people are far, far higher.
I (and probably 99% of teachers) probably couldn't tell the difference between a motion detector and a pipe bomb made from the same materials. I'm sure someone here can tell me how to make a bomb from a gatorade bottle. All you really need is a charge and a detonator, right? If the kid says it's not a bomb, but I still think it looks like one, I'm supposed to take his word?
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Here's a good question. If the "bomb" was being passed around and shown off it apparently wasn't very volatile. It think it even said that most of the parts were in the backpack and not put together. Why evacuate the whole school through the hallways where the "bomb" is instead of getting the thing out of the school?
/me thinks someones security funding was up for review and saw an opportunity to show a need.
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Here's a good question. If the "bomb" was being passed around and shown off it apparently wasn't very volatile. It think it even said that most of the parts were in the backpack and not put together. Why evacuate the whole school through the hallways where the "bomb" is instead of getting the thing out of the school?
/me thinks someones security funding was up for review and saw an opportunity to show a need.
Because that is school policy in how to deal with potential bombs. You can disagree with what the policy should be, but I'm fairly sure most, if not all places, run on a "Leave it and call the police" program.
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Walking over and looking at the device is not going to pose a huge risk if the kid's already showing it off.
You can then pass your findings up to someone who will do the same thing - without any need to evacuate the whole school and call in robots two hours later.
This has nothing to do with 'playing the odds'. You play these kind of odds every time you go for a drive, except your chances of killing multiple people are far, far higher.
I (and probably 99% of teachers) probably couldn't tell the difference between a motion detector and a pipe bomb made from the same materials. I'm sure someone here can tell me how to make a bomb from a gatorade bottle. All you really need is a charge and a detonator, right? If the kid says it's not a bomb, but I still think it looks like one, I'm supposed to take his word?
No, you're not, but if he tells you it's a motion detector and shows you how it works, then you probably could. Especially when you work at a tech school that encourages stuff like this.
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Walking over and looking at the device is not going to pose a huge risk if the kid's already showing it off.
You can then pass your findings up to someone who will do the same thing - without any need to evacuate the whole school and call in robots two hours later.
This has nothing to do with 'playing the odds'. You play these kind of odds every time you go for a drive, except your chances of killing multiple people are far, far higher.
I (and probably 99% of teachers) probably couldn't tell the difference between a motion detector and a pipe bomb made from the same materials. I'm sure someone here can tell me how to make a bomb from a gatorade bottle. All you really need is a charge and a detonator, right? If the kid says it's not a bomb, but I still think it looks like one, I'm supposed to take his word?
No, you're not, but if he tells you it's a motion detector and shows you how it works, then you probably could. Especially when you work at a tech school that encourages stuff like this.
I'm almost positive I would have no idea if he was telling the truth or not. I don't even know how a homemade motion detector would work. I'm not even sure I could tell you how a commercial motion detector works. All he has to do is tell me it doesn't work. Anything.
You're assuming it is what he says it is. If it is a bomb, he can say whatever he wants and I really couldn't tell otherwise. Do you really think some 50 year old English teacher is going to be able to tell otherwise?
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You apparently missed my sentence talking about "find someone who knows what the hell they're talking about" when I proposed the alternative earlier.
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You guys sure like dragging out a subject don't you.
If I said it was a security guard first day on the job with an executive boarding a plane who happened to have a new gadget in his luggage, would this still be on the same track?
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You apparently missed my sentence talking about "find someone who knows what the hell they're talking about" when I proposed the alternative earlier.
They have those people, they're called the bomb squad.
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Walking over and looking at the device is not going to pose a huge risk if the kid's already showing it off.
You can then pass your findings up to someone who will do the same thing - without any need to evacuate the whole school and call in robots two hours later.
This has nothing to do with 'playing the odds'. You play these kind of odds every time you go for a drive, except your chances of killing multiple people are far, far higher.
I (and probably 99% of teachers) probably couldn't tell the difference between a motion detector and a pipe bomb made from the same materials. I'm sure someone here can tell me how to make a bomb from a gatorade bottle. All you really need is a charge and a detonator, right? If the kid says it's not a bomb, but I still think it looks like one, I'm supposed to take his word?
No, you're not, but if he tells you it's a motion detector and shows you how it works, then you probably could. Especially when you work at a tech school that encourages stuff like this.
I'm almost positive I would have no idea if he was telling the truth or not. I don't even know how a homemade motion detector would work. I'm not even sure I could tell you how a commercial motion detector works. All he has to do is tell me it doesn't work. Anything.
You're assuming it is what he says it is. If it is a bomb, he can say whatever he wants and I really couldn't tell otherwise. Do you really think some 50 year old English teacher is going to be able to tell otherwise?
Probably not, in which case you're screwed if it really is a bomb.
Nonetheless, I'd trust the kid. This culture of paranoia has gotten a bit out of control - school bombings are incredibly rare, and assuming that a kid with a gadget is a bomber before anything else just seems absurd.
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But that's the thing, I'm nobody. I don't get to make those decisions. I can't say who does and doesn't get suspended, get the police called in, investigated for child abuse, whatever. I mean you can by keeping quiet, but you get in trouble for that.
If you see something, you basically have to tell someone. If I see something that looks like a bomb, and I "investigate" and it IS a bomb? Well I'm screwed. Fired, possible criminal charges, possible civil suits from parents and other employees, the knowledge that my actions could have led to injury or death.
And I keep saying this but I don't know anything about bombs really. That's why they'd rather come in 100 times to defuse random crap than let the one time it is a bomb go untold because some schmuck decided it was all cool.
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We're not necessarily criticizing you, though, so much as the system that's created these circumstances.
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It worked this time around. It was simply a false alarm. . .
That's all, nothing more, nothing less.
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We're not necessarily criticizing you, though, so much as the system that's created these circumstances.
Oh I was referring to myself in sort of a vague "If I found it". I don't take it personally. I'm using myself as an everyman in this scenario.
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Nonetheless, I'd trust the kid. This culture of paranoia has gotten a bit out of control - school bombings are incredibly rare, and assuming that a kid with a gadget is a bomber before anything else just seems absurd.
Exactly. What the hell is wrong with people that an 11 year old with a gatorade bottle with wires in it is immediately a threat? Why do we instantly think 'bomb?' It's unnecessary and only feeds into back into this culture of "terrorists are everywhere and they want to eat your babies."
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Nonetheless, I'd trust the kid. This culture of paranoia has gotten a bit out of control - school bombings are incredibly rare, and assuming that a kid with a gadget is a bomber before anything else just seems absurd.
Exactly. What the hell is wrong with people that an 11 year old with a gatorade bottle with wires in it is immediately a threat? Why do we instantly think 'bomb?' It's unnecessary and only feeds into back into this culture of "terrorists are everywhere and they want to eat your babies."
Because kids attack schools, sometimes with bombs. There is no smoke and mirror to it. Since kids attack schools, sometimes with bombs, the schools need plans on how to deal with things that could be bombs.
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Yes, but you're far more likely to have students killed while crossing the street in front of the school, or by suffocating in the cafeteria, or by having an asthma attack during gym class.
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Yes, but you're far more likely to have students killed while crossing the street in front of the school, or by suffocating in the cafeteria, or by having an asthma attack during gym class.
And the schools have plans for those too. But that doesn't exclude plans on far more serious things like bombs and shootings. Any student could be disturbed enough to attack the school, and perhaps using a bomb. So schools can't assume it won't happen.
My workplace does the exact same thing. I'm sure it's the same elsewhere, people do not take potential bombs lightly. And to me, making sure they test it is worth more than making sure the kid isn't embarrassed. That's just an easy call for me.
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So you think that, if a student is seen with an unknown electronic device, the correct response is to:
Call in police and arson teams.
Speak to the student.
After speaking with the student for an hour, THEN evacuate the school, THEN call in a robot to examine the device.
Determine the device harmless.
Search the student's house.
That doesn't seem to go awry somewhere around the first half of step 3 to you? Where the trained experts spoke to the student for an hour, then went ahead to the rest of the steps?
Any student can be disturbed enough to attack the school with a bomb, sure. The odds of it are just so microscopic that all this theater basically does more harm than good.
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So you think that, if a student is seen with an unknown electronic device, the correct response is to:
Call in police and arson teams.
Speak to the student.
After speaking with the student for an hour, THEN evacuate the school, THEN call in a robot to examine the device.
Determine the device harmless.
Search the student's house.
That doesn't seem to go awry somewhere around the first half of step 3 to you? Where the trained experts spoke to the student for an hour, then went ahead to the rest of the steps?
Any student can be disturbed enough to attack the school with a bomb, sure. The odds of it are just so microscopic that all this theater basically does more harm than good.
If the person who sees it believes it could be an explosive device, then yes. This all hinges of if the person looking at it thinks it's a bomb.
If a kid has a device and you don't know what it is and you ask him. The kid tells you and it's whatever. Unless you think it's a bomb, the kid goes on his way.
It is not: Unknown object = bomb
If someone sees an object and thinks "Hey that could be a bomb", that's pretty much the part I'm talking about.
It's not the "I don't know what that is" part that calls in the cops, it's the "but it kinda looks like a bomb" part.
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So here's the deal. The VP saw a strange electronic device, so he called the police because he thought it might be a bomb. After that, he and the police talked to the kid for a while. For some reason, they weren't reassured by the child that it wasn't a bomb, so they ran a bunch of tests on it. The device was determined to be harmless. After that they searched the house for anything suspicious.
I can't see why the bomb squad needed to be called, because the child was probably scared senseless with some potentially hostile police questioning him about a strange electronic device. I doubt he said anything like "I have a bomb!", because if he did that then he would probably be arrested for making a bomb threat, and something like that would have been mentioned in the article in any case. So chances are the child informed the police that it was a simple motion detector, and I doubt the police needed to MAST and X-ray an electronic device that isn't connected to anything that looks even slightly explosive. And after the device was decided to be completely harmless, there was no reason for the child's house to be searched. This seems like the police and fire department completely overreacted.
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So you think that, if a student is seen with an unknown electronic device, the correct response is to:
Call in police and arson teams.
Speak to the student.
After speaking with the student for an hour, THEN evacuate the school, THEN call in a robot to examine the device.
Determine the device harmless.
Search the student's house.
That doesn't seem to go awry somewhere around the first half of step 3 to you? Where the trained experts spoke to the student for an hour, then went ahead to the rest of the steps?
Any student can be disturbed enough to attack the school with a bomb, sure. The odds of it are just so microscopic that all this theater basically does more harm than good.
If the person who sees it believes it could be an explosive device, then yes. This all hinges of if the person looking at it thinks it's a bomb.
If a kid has a device and you don't know what it is and you ask him. The kid tells you and it's whatever. Unless you think it's a bomb, the kid goes on his way.
It is not: Unknown object = bomb
If someone sees an object and thinks "Hey that could be a bomb", that's pretty much the part I'm talking about.
It's not the "I don't know what that is" part that calls in the cops, it's the "but it kinda looks like a bomb" part.
You misread my post.
The step I was criticizing was step 3, where the arson and fire teams talked to the kid for a long time and then decided to go crazy.
They should have had no problem figuring out it wasn't a bomb.
So yeah, I agree with spardason.
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Well it looks like everyone'ish reached an agreement :)
That makes a nice change.
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Well it looks like everyone'ish reached an agreement :)
That makes a nice change.
Wait for it.... :P
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Well it looks like everyone'ish reached an agreement :)
That makes a nice change.
Not it doesn't. And that means we disagree!
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Well it looks like everyone'ish reached an agreement :)
That makes a nice change.
I can't disagree with it because I wasn't talking about the police response. I was saying it was in the best interests to call the police despite the odds of it being a bomb. It's a topic shift and there is nowhere to go with it.
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Jeez...you'd expect this sort of panic to happen in Boston instead. Though if it had happened there, the National Guard probably would have been called in (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_bomb_scare). :p
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Are you reading the same list I am? Since 1999 (Columbine) there have been 4 attacks that involved bombs and 4 foiled attacks that had bombs. But I think you're being nitpicky over the point. Homemade bombs are a method used by kids in school attacks.
Ok, maybe you should point them out. I did a word search for the word "bomb" and the vast majority of the incidents that involve bombs ALSO involved guns. This kid didn't have a gun, so those incidents that were just involving bombs are the only ones that apply in this situation. Even then, most of those involved more than one bomb. Also I didn't include those that didn't occur in the US because quite frankly Iraq != US.
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There was a slew of bomb threats in my area a couple of years ago. Now they zip-tie our lockers shut during testing week, and enforce airport-level security at the entrances, just so kids don't go around talking about how they have bombs, and thus disrupting state testing (Which was the reason for the ton of threats in the first place)
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Bomb threat != a kid bringing an actual bomb to school.
I remember back in middle school there was one or two times that the entire school was evac'ed because of credible bomb threats, and the police with their bomb sniffing dogs came in to search the building. Didn't find anything of course. Threats are many, actual bombings are few.
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Columbine
19-year-old Alvaro Rafael Castillo opened fire at Orange High School with a rifle and shotgun, shooting eight times and wounding two students. Officers ordered him to stop firing and he immediately complied. Castillo killed his father with a firearm before driving to school in a van. In the van police officers found ammunition, pipe bombs, and other weapons. Castillo will be charged with first-degree murder in the death of his father while charges for the school shooting are pending.
A 13-year-old student fired a cheap imitation AK-47 inside his middle school after confronting two others students and his principal. The student was wearing a mask and had pointed the gun at the principal, the assistant superintendent and two students. After firing a shot into the ceiling and breaking a water pipe, the student's gun jammed when he attempted to fire additional shots. The student was then confronted by police officers and taken into custody. Officers also found a note in the student's backpack indicating that he had placed an explosive in the school (which has 700 students). No one was injured in the incident. (even though it doesn't mention if there was a bomb or not)
Two pipe bombs went off in a hallway of Hillsdale High School, in San Mateo, California, during the beginning of first period classes.[288] Nobody was injured from the explosions.[289] Alex Youshock, a 17-year-old former student of the school, was held by staff members until police arrived and was found with eight other pipe bombs, a two-foot-long sword, and a chainsaw concealed in a guitar case. Youshock was subsequently arrested and charged as an adult with eight felonies.[290][291]
De Anza College student Al DeGuzman planned a Columbine style school shooting at the school. An employee at a Longs Drugs store developed pictures of DeGuzman posing with his guns and homemade bombs. She and a coworker called police. DeGuzman was arrested when he returned for his photos. Police found Deguzman's bedroom stacked from top to bottom with sophisticated handmade bombs and a map of De Anza College, marked with locations where bombs would be placed. [9] In October, 2002, DeGuzman was sentenced to seven years in state prison.[408] He later committed suicide by hanging himself in his jail cell.
Jeremy Getman, 18, planned a school attack at Southside High School but it was foiled after students told a teacher that he was carrying weapons. He carried 14 pipe bombs, three smaller bombs, a propane tank, a sawed-off shotgun, and a .22 caliber pistol into the school by a duffel bag and also a book bag full of ammunition. On December 17, 2001, he was sentenced to 8 1/2 years.
17-year-old Joshua Magee was arrested in the parking lot of Malcolm High School after a school staff member, who saw the youth drinking liquor and putting on a black overcoat, called police. A search of Magee's car produced a bolt-action rifle, 20 bombs and a note stating the he wanted to injure everyone at the school except for three friends. Magee, to whom school paid close attention after it was reported to faculty that he was experimenting with explosives at home, was charged with attempted murder.
A 15-year-old boy from Monroe was already on juvenile probation when he broke down crying, police said Tuesday night, as he admitted he stockpiled bottles of gasoline, makeshift fuses, a torch, a 2-foot machete and three tanks of propane in a plot to attack former fellow students at Monroe-Woodbury High School.
Just because it involves a gun doesn't mean if you just see something that could be a bomb you don't do the same thing.
"Oh my god is that a bomb? Wait, I don't see a gun. He must be cool."
It's not bomb safety only if the guy has a gun too.
Maybe the guns are somewhere else. Maybe they're setting up the bomb now and getting the guns. Maybe it's an empty bomb and he's showing his friends before they fill it.
Just because the kid isn't waving an AK-47 around doesn't mean it's still can't be a credible threat.
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That post does not make sense to me.
Furthermore, it feels really, really paranoid.
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That post does not make sense to me.
Furthermore, it feels really, really paranoid.
Just because you don't SEE a gun doesn't mean there isn't one. And even if there isn't, you don't discount any bomb threats.
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Sure, but that doesn't connect to the original scenario at play here for me.
Nothing you're saying is necessarily untrue, but it does not connect to a kid showing off his motion detector.
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Sure, but that doesn't connect to the original scenario at play here for me.
Nothing you're saying is necessarily untrue, but it does not connect to a kid showing off his motion detector.
It doesn't matter. Kosh was stating that bomb attacks often come with guns. Which is true. Kids want to get as many as they can.
But not seeing a gun doesn't just make it go away. If the item looks like a bomb, it looks like a bomb.
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Again, I'm going to say, if you see a kid showing off an unknown electronic device to lots of friends at a technical school, and your first thought is it is a bomb, my first action should be to call in the police, then you're in a very scared place, and one that is not mathematically justifiable.
You could argue that it's the correct decision. But for the police to then go even further is just absurd.
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I want to start seeing some compromise here on all sides before it gets heated.
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Again, I'm going to say, if you see a kid showing off an unknown electronic device to lots of friends at a technical school, and your first thought is it is a bomb, my first action should be to call in the police, then you're in a very scared place, and one that is not mathematically justifiable.
You could argue that it's the correct decision. But for the police to then go even further is just absurd.
There are two different parts to this, and I'm only arguing one.
If someone sees an object they think might be a bomb, then yea, they should go tell someone who will probably call the cops. And for living in a scary place? Kids use bombs, that's what all the quotes are for.
Do they use bombs all the time? No. Is every school going to be hit with a bomb? No. I could even fathom that there have been more bombings than kids bringing in their homemade motion detectors but that's all speculation.
School safety does not work like "If you see something you think might be a bomb, don't worry, it's probably not."
Again, there is a difference between "I don't know what that is" and "that looks like a bomb"
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I want to start seeing some compromise here on all sides before it gets heated.
Oh it's not heated. I'm not anyways.
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What kid goes around showing off a bomb to his friends? Kinda ruins the whole "hidden" aspect that makes a bombing successful.
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What kid goes around showing off a bomb to his friends? Kinda ruins the whole "hidden" aspect that makes a bombing successful.
That's actually how most plots get foiled because kids aren't hardened criminals.
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As I see it, this discussion is getting too hung up on how people should react upon seeing an object that they believe to be a bomb. There are a range of possible responses in this scenario, and which response is appropriate will probably depend on the context.
More relevant to this particular scenario, however, is the problem of people who think that an object looks like a bomb when everything they know about bombs comes from Hollywood thrillers. You can have as many blinky lights and wires as you want, but if an object doesn’t contain any volatile chemicals it is not a bomb.
Now, the question in my mind is how we can educate people to distinguish between benign homemade electronics and dangerous explosives. If basic electronics was taught in more science classes, I’m guessing we wouldn’t have this problem.
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As I see it, this discussion is getting too hung up on how people should react upon seeing an object that they believe to be a bomb. There are a range of possible responses in this scenario, and which response is appropriate will probably depend on the context.
More relevant to this particular scenario, however, is the problem of people who think that an object looks like a bomb when everything they know about bombs comes from Hollywood thrillers. You can have as many blinky lights and wires as you want, but if an object doesn’t contain any volatile chemicals it is not a bomb.
Now, the question in my mind is how we can educate people to distinguish between benign homemade electronics and dangerous explosives. If basic electronics was taught in more science classes, I’m guessing we wouldn’t have this problem.
Absolutely true. Most bombs don't have flashy timers or the like.
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This is my forte' but I don't like talking about it.
I am conflicted.
I could school the crap out of anyone on this forum about it but i'm above pleasing my ego.
So i'm just going to ask that people stop with the 'who knows most about explosives' tangent before it begins. That was discussed earlier and cyclic threads are doomed.
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"Oh my god is that a bomb? Wait, I don't see a gun. He must be cool."
No, but if you don't see a gun it drasticly lowers the probability it actually is a bomb. Most of those attacks involved the student actually shooting people, such as columbine.
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"Oh my god is that a bomb? Wait, I don't see a gun. He must be cool."
No, but if you don't see a gun it drasticly lowers the probability it actually is a bomb. Most of those attacks involved the student actually shooting people, such as columbine.
That is correct, but it doesn't eliminate it. As a teacher or staff member, if you see something you think could be a bomb, you're pretty much got to tell someone. You can't make that distinction. Usually the police do that.
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So we're now in a place where a child cannot bring an electronic device to school without the risk of it being determined a bomb by someone who is not allowed to simply ask them.
Talk about a siege mentality.
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More like an absence of mentality...
:doubt:
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So we're now in a place where a child cannot bring an electronic device to school without the risk of it being determined a bomb by someone who is not allowed to simply ask them.
Talk about a siege mentality.
A gameboy is an electronic device, so is a cellphone. Neither of these will get the bomb squad called in.
Basing it purely off the description I've seen here, we're talking about a enclosed object with wires and electronics on it. How else would you describe a homemade bomb?
That's what I'm saying. Lots of things that aren't bombs can look like bombs. Untrained people like teachers, janitors, cafeteria workers can't tell the difference between what is and is not a bomb. So school policy is to call the cops because they would rather call them in 100 times on something that isn't a bomb than let it go through once because people didn't want to make a scene.
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Yes, and I think that's problematic.
Bombs are scary, school bombings seem frightening, but the fact is they're so incredibly rare as to essentially be a non-issue.
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"Oh my god is that a bomb? Wait, I don't see a gun. He must be cool."
No, but if you don't see a gun it drasticly lowers the probability it actually is a bomb. Most of those attacks involved the student actually shooting people, such as columbine.
That is correct, but it doesn't eliminate it. As a teacher or staff member, if you see something you think could be a bomb, you're pretty much got to tell someone. You can't make that distinction. Usually the police do that.
You can never completely eliminate anything, but the odds of it being a bomb at a technology orientated school are extremely low, it was far far more likely to be some electronics gizmo. You're also far more likely to gety hit by a car then get blown up by a bomb at a school like this, does that mean we should ban kids from going outside?
Basing it purely off the description I've seen here, we're talking about a enclosed object with wires and electronics on it. How else would you describe a homemade bomb?
That also describes any number of things. In my high school electronics class we built any number of enclosed objects with cool displays and what not, in any one of those (especially the strobe light) there could have been concealed explosives since the actual electronics didn't normally take up much space compared to the actual volume of the black box it was in.
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Yes, and I think that's problematic.
Bombs are scary, school bombings seem frightening, but the fact is they're so incredibly rare as to essentially be a non-issue.
I agree. But as an untrained person, you can't know if this is the one out of 13.6 million or whatever it was. Believe me, if it is the one, parents would not want to hear "what were the odds?"
Again, just reiterating, the item and how it was described sounds to me like it was as close to "looks like a bomb" as you could probably get without it being an actual bomb.
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There was nothing inside it. It was a bunch of wires. The guy was holding it plain sight, showing it to his classmates.
It did not look like a bomb.
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"Oh my god is that a bomb? Wait, I don't see a gun. He must be cool."
No, but if you don't see a gun it drasticly lowers the probability it actually is a bomb. Most of those attacks involved the student actually shooting people, such as columbine.
That is correct, but it doesn't eliminate it. As a teacher or staff member, if you see something you think could be a bomb, you're pretty much got to tell someone. You can't make that distinction. Usually the police do that.
You can never completely eliminate anything, but the odds of it being a bomb at a technology orientated school are extremely low, it was far far more likely to be some electronics gizmo. You're also far more likely to gety hit by a car then get blown up by a bomb at a school like this, does that mean we should ban kids from going outside?
I am not disagreeing with this point, so I'm kinda confused as to why people keep bringing it up. Yes, the odds of a student bringing a bomb into a school are amazingly low. But teachers are other people don't get to make the call on if it's the real one. You're right, not calling the cops means all those false alarms never happen but it means the few times it IS a bomb, nothing happens. Because they can't tell the difference.
That also describes any number of things. In my high school electronics class we built any number of enclosed objects with cool displays and what not, in any one of those (especially the strobe light) there could have been concealed explosives since the actual electronics didn't normally take up much space compared to the actual volume of the black box it was in.
So what's the alternative? How do untrained people tell what is and is not a real bomb?
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There was nothing inside it. It was a bunch of wires. The guy was holding it plain sight, showing it to his classmates.
It did not look like a bomb.
It obviously did because they called the police on it. Why would they call the police if they didn't think it looked like a bomb?
The article says the person who saw it thought it was harmful.
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There's a lot of nonsense out there. I'm familiar with it firsthand, though not like this.
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There was nothing inside it. It was a bunch of wires. The guy was holding it plain sight, showing it to his classmates.
It did not look like a bomb.
It obviously did because they called the police on it. Why would they call the police if they didn't think it looked like a bomb?
The article says the person who saw it thought it was harmful.
Because he was trained in a culture of fear, distrust, and harmful paranoia.
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There was nothing inside it. It was a bunch of wires. The guy was holding it plain sight, showing it to his classmates.
It did not look like a bomb.
It obviously did because they called the police on it. Why would they call the police if they didn't think it looked like a bomb?
The article says the person who saw it thought it was harmful.
Because he was trained in a culture of fear, distrust, and harmful paranoia.
Absolutely. Kids have been known to use bombs at schools. Schools and police would rather do silly runs than let the bombs go through because otherwise they look paranoid.
Will the 99.9% of the time make us look like fools? Sure will. But the .1% it is a bomb we'll have a much better chance of being on it.
How would I, as a layman, know what is and is not a bomb?
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When the costs of your security procedures exceed the benefits, then it's time to abandon the procedures.
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When the costs of your security procedures exceed the benefits, then it's time to abandon the procedures.
I'm curious what formula you used to determine it wasn't worth it.
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Comparing the probability of a school bombing multiplied by the total resultant distress to the probability of a false positive multiplied by the total resultant distress. Though you'd also have to factor in the effectiveness of such training precautions (probably low.)
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You put values on the resultant distress of a successful school bombing? Did you include friends and families? Neighbors? Other nearby schools? Property damage? Was it a big bomb that did damage to the school or a tiny bomb that just did superficial damage?
How many failed bombing distresses are equal to one actual bombing distress? Do bombs where no one dies count less than ones that do kill people?
Do bombs that kill adults count more or less than one that kill kids?
And remember, you're the one who made value judgments.
That's the beauty of the plans most schools and businesses take (I'm sure you place of employment has a very similar policy). They don't have to decide if it's worth it. It's always worth it.
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No, again, it's not. You can put almost arbitrarily large values on the distress caused by school bombings and it would still not be worth it.
School bombings are preposterously rare. School fires, for example, are a much more legitimate concern. If you were to take all the time, money, words, and thoughts spent on school bombings and transfer them to school fires, you would save more lives.
We've just been fooled into thinking they're something even worth worrying about due to media exposure and the availability heuristic.
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No, again, it's not. You can put almost arbitrarily large values on the distress caused by school bombings and it would still not be worth it.
School bombings are preposterously rare. School fires, for example, are a much more legitimate concern. If you were to take all the time, money, words, and thoughts spent on school bombings and transfer them to school fires, you would save more lives.
We've just been fooled into thinking they're something even worth worrying about due to media exposure and the availability heuristic.
So again I ask, I see an object that I think is a bomb, what do I do?
I'm also curious how many false alarms there are in bomb attempts. Do you know? How many real school bomb attempts were there and how many times in the same period were the police called in for an item that wasn't a bomb?
Because this whole argument is based on all the kids were ruining due to distress is more than the distress caused by actual bombings. Do you know how many there are?
On a slightly tangential subject. Who doesn't evacuate a building in terms of a bomb threat? I'm just curious how many people call in bomb threats and how many of them actually have bombs. I was under the impression you just evacuated no matter what. It didn't matter how many actually were true.
That's what's great about my argument, it's "better safe than sorry".
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You should always evacuate in case of a bomb threat.
The entire problem here is the introduction of bomb to the scenario. It's absurd. The degree of hysteria required to train teachers to see unknown electronic devices as potential bombs is just outlandish. There have probably been more deaths by accidental pen and pencil stabs in school history, yet teachers are not trained to fear pens and pencils.
I'm not disputing much of anything after the 'potential bomb' step (well, up until the police robot and the home search; that's absurd.) But lightning from a cloudless sky is more likely to kill students.
If you see an unknown device in the hands of a friendly student and think is that a bomb? then you have a major problem.
And as a similar case, a friend of Rian's was nearly shot to death in Logan Airport because she was an MIT student with a piece of electronics she'd made.
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Definative proof that people crave idiocy.
Simultaneously, conversing with an electrical engineer (and professor) about mundane electrical systems and issues reveals that most people have no friggin' clue about technical issues. And why is this? Although we seem to be a pretty competent group, most people hold this as some sort of arcane knowledge, if you will. That VP had little common sense it seems, but keeping the prior fact in mind, I can give a little sympathy for the moron...
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Couple points I'm gonna hit on.
One, you never told me what to do when I see a student with an object I think looks like a bomb.
Two, you never answered how many false alarms there are. You've said basically X > Y I'd like to know what X and Y are.
Three, I'm gonna wager the number of people who call in bomb threats and then actually have a bomb is very very low. That one time it's real, you don't want people sitting at their desk because you were sure it was just a prank becuase a prank is far far more likely.
Four, I'm slightly concerned by this...
"If you see an unknown device in the hands of a friendly student and think is that a bomb? then you have a major problem."
Who has to be holding an unknown device that looks like a bomb (a critical part) for you to do something? If it was that easy to spot students who would carry out attacks, there wouldn't be attacks. Teachers would spot them in a second.
And I know you go cause I asked you, but how many fire alarms get pulled at your college? If it's anything like the one I work at and the one I go to school at, all the time. You could pull that fire alarm every day for a week and they'll come every time because this time could be a fire.
If you want to argue that people see things as bombs they shouldn't, that's a whole other thread. We can put up pictures and play "bomb or not a bomb". See who's the best.
These are people who aren't trained to deal with bombs, they're trained to deal with children. If I see an item that looks like it could be a bomb, I'm at least getting the principal, and believe me, the principal is no better bomb tech than I am.
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To respond to all your points at once:
The problem is not what you do after you see the student with the object that looks like a bomb (although it should not involve the arson teams and police being repeatedly shown it's not a bomb and then calling in a robot and then searching a house.)
The problem is that you think it looks like a bomb in the first place. That you think it even remotely probable. That there is something about your heuristic pathways so divorced from the actual probabilities that this is such a high-order thought.
If someone calls in a bomb threat, evacuate. They said 'bomb'.
If someone pulls a fire alarm, evacuate. It's a fire alarm.
But don't leave the building because a book fell in the hallway and the echoes sounded like an alarm and then you went and saw and decided it wasn't but maybe the alarm went off for just a second and then shorted out.
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Definative proof that people crave idiocy.
Simultaneously, conversing with an electrical engineer (and professor) about mundane electrical systems and issues reveals that most people have no friggin' clue about technical issues. And why is this? Although we seem to be a pretty competent group, most people hold this as some sort of arcane knowledge, if you will. That VP had little common sense it seems, but keeping the prior fact in mind, I can give a little sympathy for the moron...
You're surprised people with no background in electrical engineering don't know anything about electrical engineering?
I would like to think that, as a college educated person, I'm probably at least of average intelligence. I am a genius by no stretch of the imagination but I like to think I'm not stupid (insert jokes here).
That said, I'm almost certain I couldn't build a pipe bomb. If you showed me a bunch of objects and asked me to pick the bombs, I'm almost sure I'd get it wrong.
I'm curious why I should, as a person who can't tell if it's a bomb or not, should do anything but go get someone who knows.
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To respond to all your points at once:
The problem is not what you do after you see the student with the object that looks like a bomb (although it should not involve the arson teams and police being repeatedly shown it's not a bomb and then calling in a robot and then searching a house.)
The problem is that you think it looks like a bomb in the first place. That you think it even remotely probable. That there is something about your heuristic pathways so divorced from the actual probabilities that this is such a high-order thought.
If someone calls in a bomb threat, evacuate. They said 'bomb'.
If someone pulls a fire alarm, evacuate. It's a fire alarm.
But don't leave the building because a book fell in the hallway and the echoes sounded like an alarm and then you went and saw and decided it wasn't but maybe the alarm went off for just a second and then shorted out.
Ok, what does a home made bomb look like? I'm gonna guess you can make a homemade bomb out of a lot of stuff. I'm also going to guess that these objects are household items, hence the name.
What, to you, is an acceptable "bomb like" object for a person with no engineering or technical training? How can I tell between a household object that is a motion detector and an object that is a bomb?
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I don't know, ask the person holding it and showing it to his friends?
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A home made bomb can look like anything. Learning how to make a bomb is pretty simple as well. Heck, even taking an introductory chemistry class will teach you the basics of "blow-up-ology."
I don't know what his device looked like (though I'd like a look at it...), but I really get the feeling this was really, really overblown. As in ragingly stupid on the part of the VP. I'm saying this as I've had (a.) personal experience with stupid school admin decisions and (b.) heard/seen evidence of similarly stupid judgements (Remember the little girl with the empty shotgun shell? Yeah...). This may in part be due to bull-headedness in terms of discipline/control of the students, which is also potentially a massive problem. Common sense goes a long way. As we weren't there to hear what went on between the VP and the student, we can't truly judge the logic of the VP. However, I'm pretty certain the logic of the VP was very much lacking...
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And he says it's a quantum jigglyboop designed to find neutrons in pickles.
That's a cute way of saying "What if he lies to me?"
He could have a steel pipe bomb with a little detonator on it and say "It's a barometer, the cylinder has a set pressure inside and this device reads the outside pressure" and I wouldn't be able to contradict him because I don't know.
I doubt the kid who made an explosive device is gonna go "Oh, it's a bomb, I was coming in to kill you all but you caught me. Here's how you turn it off. Let's go see the cops."
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And he says it's a quantum jigglyboop designed to find neutrons in pickles.
That's a cute way of saying "What if he lies to me?"
He could have a steel pipe bomb with a little detonator on it and say "It's a barometer, the cylinder has a set pressure inside and this device reads the outside pressure" and I wouldn't be able to contradict him because I don't know.
I doubt the kid who made an explosive device is gonna go "Oh, it's a bomb, I was coming in to kill you all but you caught me. Here's how you turn it off. Let's go see the cops."
This is paranoia.
If he lies to you, then you're ****ed. Bomb goes off, people die. But the fact that you even consider that worth considering to a degree that will create trouble indicates that you are not aware of how incredibly rare this is.
Not once in history has a child of this age brought a bomb into school with the intention of detonating it and carried it around in public gleefully showing it off.
This hypothetical 'kid who made an explosive device' is less likely to exist than a spontaneous grand mal seizure on the kid's part. Are you prepared for that outcome?
A home made bomb can look like anything. Learning how to make a bomb is pretty simple as well. Heck, even taking an introductory chemistry class will teach you the basics of "blow-up-ology."
I don't know what his device looked like (though I'd like a look at it...), but I really get the feeling this was really, really overblown. As in ragingly stupid on the part of the VP. I'm saying this as I've had (a.) personal experience with stupid school admin decisions and (b.) heard/seen evidence of similarly stupid judgements (Remember the little girl with the empty shotgun shell? Yeah...). This may in part be due to bull-headedness in terms of discipline/control of the students, which is also potentially a massive problem. Common sense goes a long way. As we weren't there to hear what went on between the VP and the student, we can't truly judge the logic of the VP. However, I'm pretty certain the logic of the VP was very much lacking...
I concur.
I was brought in by a police officer in middle school for sketching designs for an SF story in a class notebook. A bit of talking sorted it out. In a situation like this, I imagine my home would've been searched.
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A home made bomb can look like anything. Learning how to make a bomb is pretty simple as well. Heck, even taking an introductory chemistry class will teach you the basics of "blow-up-ology."
I don't know what his device looked like (though I'd like a look at it...), but I really get the feeling this was really, really overblown. As in ragingly stupid on the part of the VP. I'm saying this as I've had (a.) personal experience with stupid school admin decisions and (b.) heard/seen evidence of similarly stupid judgements (Remember the little girl with the empty shotgun shell? Yeah...). This may in part be due to bull-headedness in terms of discipline/control of the students, which is also potentially a massive problem. Common sense goes a long way. As we weren't there to hear what went on between the VP and the student, we can't truly judge the logic of the VP. However, I'm pretty certain the logic of the VP was very much lacking...
Can I point out how you say that a bomb can look like anything, and then, without seeing what it really looked like, decided the person overreacted? What if it really did look like a bomb?
How can you say any item can be a bomb and then lay into a person because they thought an item looked like a bomb?
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And he says it's a quantum jigglyboop designed to find neutrons in pickles.
That's a cute way of saying "What if he lies to me?"
He could have a steel pipe bomb with a little detonator on it and say "It's a barometer, the cylinder has a set pressure inside and this device reads the outside pressure" and I wouldn't be able to contradict him because I don't know.
I doubt the kid who made an explosive device is gonna go "Oh, it's a bomb, I was coming in to kill you all but you caught me. Here's how you turn it off. Let's go see the cops."
This is paranoia.
If he lies to you, then you're ****ed. Bomb goes off, people die. But the fact that you even consider that worth considering to a degree that will create trouble indicates that you are not aware of how incredibly rare this is.
Not once in history has a child of this age brought a bomb into school with the intention of detonating it and carried it around in public gleefully showing it off.
This hypothetical 'kid who made an explosive device' is less likely to exist than a spontaneous grand mal seizure on the kid's part. Are you prepared for that outcome?
Absolutely, you know why? I don't blow up in either one. And neither will any of the children who are in my care. My chances of blowing up only go down.
And as for having a seizure, as you've stated, he could have a seizure if I ask him if he brought his homework.
To use the wonderful line of thinking, if I have to pick between embarrassed kid and me maybe getting blown up, guess which I pick? Me living. That's the great part. I'm sure all school handbooks says "don't bring a bomb like device into school" and believe me, it isn't the kid or an engineer who gets to determine what is and isn't bomb like.
Just like they don't bring in weapons experts to determine if the thing the kid brings in looks like a gun.
I still notice you won't tell me what is and is not a bomb or even how often this happens.
If you walked into a bank or a government building and said "hey guys it's just a motion detector I'm gonna show my friend". How long do you think it'll take the teller to press the button? And that's just a building full of money, imagine a building full of kids.
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You can tell it's not a bomb because the student is holding it and showing it to his friends in a technical school where students are encouraged to make things.
It should take 30 seconds to verify that it's not a bomb.
It should take another 30 to give the kid some extra credit for his awesome motion detector.
The fact that the school even worries about being bombed is just unjustifiable. School bombings are incredibly rare. Far more rare than many other types of violent crime that could happen on school grounds.
The problem is you're starting from the assumption that this is a bomb because you think that's the one you should start from because, well, it does the most harm, it could blow you up. But it's probably more likely that a given student in the hall has a gun in his pants than it is that that piece of electronics is a bomb.
Why aren't you patting down the students and searching their cars?
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And he says it's a quantum jigglyboop designed to find neutrons in pickles.
That's a cute way of saying "What if he lies to me?"
He could have a steel pipe bomb with a little detonator on it and say "It's a barometer, the cylinder has a set pressure inside and this device reads the outside pressure" and I wouldn't be able to contradict him because I don't know.
I doubt the kid who made an explosive device is gonna go "Oh, it's a bomb, I was coming in to kill you all but you caught me. Here's how you turn it off. Let's go see the cops."
:wtf:
These weren't even high school kids. Unless you're dealing with Satan incarnate, I really doubt you're going to have a little kid toting something like that around. As per your description, the device you described looked nothing like the one in the actual events. A pipe bomb is a pipe. A reactive material is found inside. The pipe about the reative material is not only casing but becomes shrapnel... Yeah. Nasty.
You'll note this also lookes like a bomb. You'll also note that although a bomb has wires (if it has a more sophisticated detonator), it also needs a charge. A plastic Gatorade bottle with wires in it does not have too many ways of hurting the general populace in the area... unless you beat them with it. Caution is good, but as I was saying, this got WAY out of hand.
A home made bomb can look like anything. Learning how to make a bomb is pretty simple as well. Heck, even taking an introductory chemistry class will teach you the basics of "blow-up-ology."
I don't know what his device looked like (though I'd like a look at it...), but I really get the feeling this was really, really overblown. As in ragingly stupid on the part of the VP. I'm saying this as I've had (a.) personal experience with stupid school admin decisions and (b.) heard/seen evidence of similarly stupid judgements (Remember the little girl with the empty shotgun shell? Yeah...). This may in part be due to bull-headedness in terms of discipline/control of the students, which is also potentially a massive problem. Common sense goes a long way. As we weren't there to hear what went on between the VP and the student, we can't truly judge the logic of the VP. However, I'm pretty certain the logic of the VP was very much lacking...
Can I point out how you say that a bomb can look like anything, and then, without seeing what it really looked like, decided the person overreacted? What if it really did look like a bomb?
How can you say any item can be a bomb and then lay into a person because they thought an item looked like a bomb?
To our friends at the Bureau, a very warm welcome. :)
Well, welcome to Advanced Terrorism/Spycraft 101. This is not a class for grade school students. OHHHKAY, how do you get a bomb somewhere it shouldn't be? You put it in your shoes or some other crafty place that isn't conspicuous. Or make it out of a material that isn't conspicuous while being hidden in a crafty place. This is how spies and the baddies have been doing it since... long before you were ever born. This is very technical, involves a great knowledge of chemistry, and all manner of other things like so. It also involves tact. You don't show everybody that graphing calculator... that doesn't actually have batteries in the back. But then you weren't dealing with the devil child here, he has no motivation to do such a thing. To make a potent weapon out of such a small space also requires a hefty explosive which your common happy school child doesn't carry. And if that's the case, you might as well do a chemical analysis of EVERYTHING everyone has in the entire building. That's what I mean when a home made weapon can be made to look like anything. The desire to do that, however, is above and beyond most everyone - your elementary school student will concievably not do this.
I'm going to stop this before our good friends at the FBI think I'm some sort of dissident who must be warranted and searched. This ludicrous sentiment that everyone is suspect is over the long term quite harmful to the health of communities and nations. We're picking at the VP as no common sense was there: the student showed no signs of being dangerous, he did not act as a dangerous person would act (you know, sneaky/tactful), and upon questioning the student (if the VP did it at all - when he/she should have), the VP still showed no real competance. Councelling? The only reason the kid and the family might need councelling is for any distress caused by this "charlie-foxtrot." Anything else is unjust...
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Seriously BL, stop looking at it from the viewpoint of "I don't know what that is. I'll assume it's a bomb first," and try looking at it from the viewpoint of "this school promotes building technology. This student built a piece of technology. The likelihood that's a bomb isn't even worth considering."
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I agree.
These are kids. They are not foreign combatants. The degree of suspicion required to see a bomb here, of all places, is just extraordinary.
The students are not the enemy.
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So what's the alternative? How do untrained people tell what is and is not a real bomb?
Play the odds.
I am not disagreeing with this point, so I'm kinda confused as to why people keep bringing it up. Yes, the odds of a student bringing a bomb into a school are amazingly low. But teachers are other people don't get to make the call on if it's the real one. You're right, not calling the cops means all those false alarms never happen but it means the few times it IS a bomb, nothing happens. Because they can't tell the difference.
People keep bringing it up to show how astoundingly illogical an action like that is.
Because he was trained in a culture of fear, distrust, and harmful paranoia.
Or it was just ass-covering.
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You can tell it's not a bomb because the student is holding it and showing it to his friends in a technical school where students are encouraged to make things.
It should take 30 seconds to verify that it's not a bomb.
It should take another 30 to give the kid some extra credit for his awesome motion detector.
As I've said, I couldn't tell you if it was a bomb or not. Even bomb squads can't tell if items are bombs or not just by looking at it for a few seconds. Why do you think they come in with heavy suits and robots and shoot water cannons at them? Do you think these guys get paid by the bomb?
And you want a guy who went to school for 4 years, most of which were teaching and gen ed classes, is going to be able to tell what is and isn't a bomb in a few moments even though it takes bomb squads a lot longer?
The fact that the school even worries about being bombed is just unjustifiable. School bombings are incredibly rare. Far more rare than many other types of violent crime that could happen on school grounds.
And here is where the question comes in that you won't really. If you can make a bomb look like anything, why are people who aren't trained to make the decision just ignore their own feelings and just let it go because the odds are so amazingly low?
I'm just amazed that people are painting people as jittery panicky people who run around at the slightest noise are the last line of defense in school bombings. An event that has happened in the past and will happen in the future. Don't bother calling the police, let these people decide, they'll know which are the real bombs.
Either teachers and faculty can call in the cops or they can't.
I'd like to think you would want a teacher to call the cops if they saw say.... 5 sticks of something that looked like dynamite and a timer counting down. You'd want them to call right?
Do you want them to call it in when it's really obvious? When does it stop being really obvious? How does a layperson know what is obviously a bomb?
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Seriously BL, stop looking at it from the viewpoint of "I don't know what that is. I'll assume it's a bomb first," and try looking at it from the viewpoint of "this school promotes building technology. This student built a piece of technology. The likelihood that's a bomb isn't even worth considering."
Except if it is a bomb and blows up.
"Did you see it?"
Yea
"Did you think it looked like a bomb?"
Yea
"What did you do?"
Nothing
"Why not?"
I'm not qualified to tell what is and isn't a bomb.
"Did you get anyone who could?"
No
"Why not?"
Didn't want to make a scene.
As for making them foreign combatants. Almost every single school, workplace, building, whatever all have the same policy. If you see something that looks like a bomb, get someone. Go get your boss, someone in charge, a security guard, anyone.
It doesn't say "If you see an item you think is a bomb, remember this, who would bomb you? What are the odds, go back to what you're doing."
"If you see an object that looks like a bomb, ask yourself, am I smart? Do you have a degree in engineering? If no, keep doing what you're doing."
No it's "Does it look like a bomb? Let's go get someone who can tell us."
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"Did you think it looked like a bomb?"
Yea
HERE! Right here. You yourself have said that you can't evaluate whether a given device is a bomb or not. Fact of the matter is, if you don't know what the device is, odds are extremely in favor of it not being a bomb.
Really, you're still looking at it from the "I don't know what it is, so it must be a bomb." It's a logical fallacy.
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So what's the alternative? How do untrained people tell what is and is not a real bomb?
Play the odds.
Ok, that's super easy. If I call the cops, the odds of me being blown up by said device are probably zero. If I don't, it's still really low, but it's probably higher than zero.
How can I be blown up by a device if I run screaming like a girl? The odds for getting blown up actually go up if I don't do anything.
You're saying "take the risk" when the alternative, has no downside for me. Not only am I following school policy, but it actually lowers the chance I'm going to die.
People keep bringing it up to show how astoundingly illogical an action like that is.
How is taking an action that helps ensure my safety and the safety of the children around me illogical? Remember, I think it could be a bomb.
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"Did you think it looked like a bomb?"
Yea
HERE! Right here. You yourself have said that you can't evaluate whether a given device is a bomb or not. Fact of the matter is, if you don't know what the device is, odds are extremely in favor of it not being a bomb.
Really, you're still looking at it from the "I don't know what it is, so it must be a bomb." It's a logical fallacy.
No, I'm saying it looks like a bomb. Not "it looks like nothing I've seen before" or "I don't know what it is"
You could show me the Large Hadron Collider and I wouldn't know what it is, but I wouldn't think its a bomb.
You could show me a cherry picker and I wouldn't know what it is, but I wouldn't think it was a bomb.
There are hundreds, thousands!,of things that you could show me and I would have no idea what they are, but I wouldn't think they were bombs.
If you showed me an object that looked like you could carry and had some kind of enclosure, and wires, and an electrical component. Oh and it's at a place I go to all the time and I've never seen it before and it looks homemade and it has the parts I would normally associate with a homemade bomb like a place to hold the charge and a detonator......
no no I wouldn't tell anyone. It's probably a homemade motion detector.
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You can tell it's not a bomb because the student is holding it and showing it to his friends in a technical school where students are encouraged to make things.
It should take 30 seconds to verify that it's not a bomb.
It should take another 30 to give the kid some extra credit for his awesome motion detector.
As I've said, I couldn't tell you if it was a bomb or not. Even bomb squads can't tell if items are bombs or not just by looking at it for a few seconds. Why do you think they come in with heavy suits and robots and shoot water cannons at them? Do you think these guys get paid by the bomb?
And you want a guy who went to school for 4 years, most of which were teaching and gen ed classes, is going to be able to tell what is and isn't a bomb in a few moments even though it takes bomb squads a lot longer?
The fact that the school even worries about being bombed is just unjustifiable. School bombings are incredibly rare. Far more rare than many other types of violent crime that could happen on school grounds.
And here is where the question comes in that you won't really. If you can make a bomb look like anything, why are people who aren't trained to make the decision just ignore their own feelings and just let it go because the odds are so amazingly low?
No, I've already answered the question.
The answer is, you walk up to the kid, you ask the kid, you trust the kid's response.
The alternative is to treat the students at your tech schools as potential bombers, when they are far less likely to be school bombers than your coworkers are likely to be sex offenders.
Why are you not monitoring them when they talk to students? They are more likely to be propositioning the students for sex than that device is likely to be a bomb when the student says it is not.
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So what's the alternative? How do untrained people tell what is and is not a real bomb?
Play the odds.
Ok, that's super easy. If I call the cops, the odds of me being blown up by said device are probably zero. If I don't, it's still really low, but it's probably higher than zero.
How can I be blown up by a device if I run screaming like a girl? The odds for getting blown up actually go up if I don't do anything.
You're saying "take the risk" when the alternative, has no downside for me. Not only am I following school policy, but it actually lowers the chance I'm going to die.
People keep bringing it up to show how astoundingly illogical an action like that is.
How is taking an action that helps ensure my safety and the safety of the children around me illogical? Remember, I think it could be a bomb.
This is circular logic... :doubt:
No one here denies the point you're making. However, you've taken common sense out of the equation.
Why do we not support the VP? As you've noted, some of us have been in similar, though not as trying situations. Even after having a discussion in the office with the proctors, even with our parents, we still suffered the punishment or unfair decrees of the said officials. And for what reason? There really wasn't one. Is it a bomb? The VP could have done a much better job finding out before causing such a problem.
We're not condemning the VP's concerns. We're citing the way in which that individual handled the situation was piss-poor. It very possibly negatively affected the student, his parents, and maybe even his friends. It disrupted the area and caused the taxpayers an unnecessary expense.
The only sense in which this can be justified is if that person genuinely thought that was a weapon. Even still, did that person collaborate with the other teachers/admins? Where was the teamwork in deciding what the problem was? A school is not some sort of secure reasearch lab that must be defended from evil spies, etc. Jumping on the slightest hunch without thought is bad leadership. It's good to be wary, but that also entails analyzing and observing the situation. Something about this whole scenario screams out that some sensibility was lost somewhere. Again, very poorly handled.
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:wtf:
These weren't even high school kids. Unless you're dealing with Satan incarnate, I really doubt you're going to have a little kid toting something like that around. As per your description, the device you described looked nothing like the one in the actual events. A pipe bomb is a pipe. A reactive material is found inside. The pipe about the reative material is not only casing but becomes shrapnel... Yeah. Nasty.
Two kids, aged 13 and 11 set off the fire alarm and when everyone went outside, they opened fire on them with rifles from the nearby woods. They killed 5 people and wounded 10. They were wearing camo.
Why am I telling you this? Look at the list I posted and look at all the kids who are 11, 12, 13 years old or younger who killed fellow classmates or teachers. And you're telling me this kid who everyone wants to shower with extra credit for making a homemade motion detector couldn't make a bomb?
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And this is grounds for treating all kids as potential shooters?
There are millions of kids in school right now. Just as there are billions of Muslims out there. School shootings don't make kids dangerous any more than 9/11 made Muslims dangerous.
Now if the kid holding the motion detector has a known history of depression, aggression, isolation, threats, reported dangerous behavior - anything like that - then maybe you can worry.
But otherwise it's innocent until proven guilty.
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No, I've already answered the question.
The answer is, you walk up to the kid, you ask the kid, you trust the kid's response.
The alternative is to treat the students at your tech schools as potential bombers, when they are far less likely to be school bombers than your coworkers are likely to be sex offenders.
Why are you not monitoring them when they talk to students? They are more likely to be propositioning the students for sex than that device is likely to be a bomb when the student says it is not.
I was teaching at a school in Dundalk. I was student teaching at the time. One of the students thought it would be hilarious to show me his gun. His handgun. In the time I left the room to tell someone to get the principal (and the cops) he had handed that gun off and I lost where it went because I had to go get someone.
Cops came, searched the kid. No gun.
Where's the gun?
What gun?
The gun you had
I didn't have a gun.
That kid lied right to the face of the police and the principal and everything. Pinned everything on me. I didn't like him. I wanted him out of the class so I made it up. Not one kid said he had a gun.
You know they did? Nothing. I couldn't prove it. No gun, I'm a student teacher.
I got to sit there for 3 months while that kid made little finger gun gestures at me. This was a middle school. He was 12. Twelve.
Could it have been a BB gun? Maybe. You ever been to Dundalk? Ever seen The Wire? Yea it might have been real.
So when you're done telling me to trust the kid I'll tell you the story of the kid who showed me his knife and his pot he was selling.
Kids will lie through their teeth. They will weave such lies on why they don't have their homework, or why the fight was the other kids fault. Ask any parent, kids lie.
So this whole "Don't believe your instincts, you're a paranoid idiot, believe they kid" is crazy to me
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And this is grounds for treating all kids as potential shooters?
There are millions of kids in school right now. Just as there are billions of Muslims out there. School shootings don't make kids dangerous any more than 9/11 made Muslims dangerous.
Now if the kid holding the motion detector has a known history of depression, aggression, isolation, threats, reported dangerous behavior - anything like that - then maybe you can worry.
But otherwise it's innocent until proven guilty.
Which is why we don't just grab random kids. Hey that backback could have a bomb! You look funny, where's your gun?!
Hey, that kids black, he must be dealing.
This is a VP who say an item they were sooooo sure could be a bomb, they called the cops.
They make you go through metal detectors and get your luggage xrayd at the airport. Do you make grandma go through the detector? Hell yea. Does the little 4 years old luggage get scanned? Sure does. Is it a pain in the ass and take forever, absolutely.
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Why do we not support the VP? As you've noted, some of us have been in similar, though not as trying situations. Even after having a discussion in the office with the proctors, even with our parents, we still suffered the punishment or unfair decrees of the said officials. And for what reason? There really wasn't one. Is it a bomb? The VP could have done a much better job finding out before causing such a problem.
We're not condemning the VP's concerns. We're citing the way in which that individual handled the situation was piss-poor. It very possibly negatively affected the student, his parents, and maybe even his friends. It disrupted the area and caused the taxpayers an unnecessary expense.
How does a person who sees an item they think might be a bomb determine if it's a bomb? You know what I would do? I would find someone who knows what bombs are.
Trust the kid? Kids lie about everything. Smoking, drinking, drugs, sex, where they were last night, how they're doing in class. I lied to my parents like crazy, still do and I'm almost 30.
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And this is grounds for treating all kids as potential shooters?
There are millions of kids in school right now. Just as there are billions of Muslims out there. School shootings don't make kids dangerous any more than 9/11 made Muslims dangerous.
Now if the kid holding the motion detector has a known history of depression, aggression, isolation, threats, reported dangerous behavior - anything like that - then maybe you can worry.
But otherwise it's innocent until proven guilty.
Which is why we don't just grab random kids. Hey that backback could have a bomb! You look funny, where's your gun?!
Hey, that kids black, he must be dealing.
This is a VP who say an item they were sooooo sure could be a bomb, they called the cops.
They make you go through metal detectors and get your luggage xrayd at the airport. Do you make grandma go through the detector? Hell yea. Does the little 4 years old luggage get scanned? Sure does. Is it a pain in the ass and take forever, absolutely.
Okay, again, they called the cops after much discussion, at which point the arson teams and police talked to the kid, and then after a great deal more discussion brought in a robot, and then after that searched the guy's house.
It was an absurd overreaction rooted in a culture of paranoia.
EDIT: Actually, y'know what, I don't think we're getting anywhere here.
Muggings are common where I go to school; far more common than school bombings are. We walk outside at night quite a lot. Frequently we find ourselves with young black men (generally the muggers) walking behind us. These young men are likely on perfectly innocent business.
The odds that we will be attacked by these men are much higher than the odds that this student's device was a bomb.
We do not call the police for an escort.
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And this is grounds for treating all kids as potential shooters?
There are millions of kids in school right now. Just as there are billions of Muslims out there. School shootings don't make kids dangerous any more than 9/11 made Muslims dangerous.
Now if the kid holding the motion detector has a known history of depression, aggression, isolation, threats, reported dangerous behavior - anything like that - then maybe you can worry.
But otherwise it's innocent until proven guilty.
Which is why we don't just grab random kids. Hey that backback could have a bomb! You look funny, where's your gun?!
Hey, that kids black, he must be dealing.
This is a VP who say an item they were sooooo sure could be a bomb, they called the cops.
They make you go through metal detectors and get your luggage xrayd at the airport. Do you make grandma go through the detector? Hell yea. Does the little 4 years old luggage get scanned? Sure does. Is it a pain in the ass and take forever, absolutely.
Okay, again, they called the cops after much discussion, at which point the arson teams and police talked to the kid, and then after a great deal more discussion brought in a robot, and then after that searched the guy's house.
It was an absurd overreaction rooted in a culture of paranoia.
So they shouldn't have called the cops? You wanted them to talk to the kid. They did.
You're telling me they talked to this kid, were convinced it wasn't a bomb and said "Well we know now it's not a bomb. But let's call the cops, why they hell not?"
And the cops came and knew it wasn't a bomb but dicked around anyways. Then they all laughed about it.
Could it be, and I'm just spitballing here, that the VP and the police were both concerned that the device could be dangerous? Could it be they felt like making sure there was no danger and weren't just out wasting time and hassling kids for laughs?
Do you know how many schools have attacks like this? I don't want to sound like an expert cause I'm not (totally not), but schools can be super scary. Maybe the schools you went to were great and violence free but I have been scared ****less by a 12 year old and I'm 6'3" and a 175lbs.
Again, I'm not saying I know everything about schools and violence and whatnot. But believe me, from personal experience at least in the Baltimore area, schools? Can be super dangerous.
And I cannot fault someone for doing something that I can totally, TOTALLY, see myself doing. And I wouldn't feel bad about it if it turned out to be false.
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We're now just arguing hypotheticals.
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I know, they're ALL hypotheticals. Every object you see could hypothetically be a bomb.
Now obviously that pencil isn't a bomb. Or that juice box. Or that cell phone. That kid's bike isn't a bomb.
But as has been said in this thread many many many times, homemade bombs can look like almost anything. Clearly people with technical knowledge like engineers or scientists or even mechanical or electrical enthusiasts will be able to look at a device or object and more accurately say what it is and isn't.
Teachers trained in education and psychology aren't going to be able to tell, so there are a ton of things that could hypothetically be bombs. And they're the only ones who will see the next bombing (there will be a next bombing, and another and another)
The policy (which has been in place since before 9/11, I know because I was in high school before and we had a bomb scare at my high school) is always assume. Because the alternative is never assume.
You can't say "Don't do it unless you're really sure" because, as we've established, they have no idea what they're doing.
You can't tell parents that teachers and staff aren't taking action because it's probably not a bomb, and in the one case where it is a bomb, yea its gonna blow up. I don't think they'll send kids to that school.
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If you think a bottle with some wires in it is a bomb then you have real problems.
If you think that one of your kids, behaving normally, showing no suspicious tells, socially engaged with his friends, is a bomber, and you choose to bring down all this crap on him, then you also have problems.
That's my argument, and I don't think it's going to change.
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If you think a bottle with some wires in it is a bomb then you have real problems.
If you think that one of your kids, behaving normally, showing no suspicious tells, socially engaged with his friends, is a bomber, and you choose to bring down all this crap on him, then you also have problems.
That's my argument, and I don't think it's going to change.
What exactly are the suspicious tells of a bomber? It's hard enough telling who is being bullied or a bully. Or who is depressed or suicidal.
Kids who are antisocial? Violent? That's tons of them. Moody?
Short of a kid running around yelling "I'm gonna blow you all up" all behavioral things could be something else. You can't just look at a kid and say "yea, that one is a bomber"
And you're telling me you can't make a bomb out of a bottle and some wires? Maybe it was gonna go in some kids locker.
We used to make 2 liter coke bottles explode, those bottles could blow up something good and those plastic chunks could cut you if you were near it (and we never were).
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You can't make a bomb out of a bottle and some wires.
But, that issue aside, my earlier point stands as my opinion on the topic. I believe this is an extended form of self-justifying paranoia unsupported by any contingent risk/benefit analysis.
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You can't make a bomb out of a bottle and some wires.
But, that issue aside, my earlier point stands as my opinion on the topic. I believe this is an extended form of self-justifying paranoia unsupported by any contingent risk/benefit analysis.
How can you make a motion detector out of a bottle and some wire? This kid clearly did.
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I'm assuming he used more than a bottle and some wires.
Since he built a working motion detector, I imagine he could then show you the motion detector, which would demonstrate to your satisfaction that this bright kid deserves praise and support.
To imagine that the kid built a motion detector to hide his bomb indicates an unsettling degree of fear.
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Look, I think you guys are having two totally different arguments here.
Blue Lion, you’re correct that in the case you seem to be arguing—when a school official sees an object that he or she believes to be a bomb—the appropriate response would be to defer to a more knowledgeable authority. From the individual teacher’s perspective, that is the best way to protect his or her students.
However, false alarms are much more common than legitimate threats. And if every possible threat is escalated into a full police response, with bomb squads and searches and everything, then that’s a bad thing. It’s a tremendous drain on public resources, which leaves less to commit to other threats. It’s traumatic for everyone involved, and it creates a climate that’s hostile to the kind of individual experimentation and learning that a technology school should be encouraging.
What Battuta et al. are arguing is that the response in this particular case was disproportionate, and that the system as a whole should contain checks to identify false alarms before they generate this kind of absurdly overblown reaction. Teachers should absolutely still report a suspicious object to their superiors, but in cases like this it may be possible to confirm that the object is benign without calling in a bomb squad. Since this occurred at a technology school, there were probably a half dozen teachers right there on campus who could have confirmed that the object was what the child claimed it was.
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Right, yes.
I don't know why I can't manage to just say it that cogently myself. Presumably I am a dunce.
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Look, I think you guys are having two totally different arguments here.
Blue Lion, you’re correct that in the case you seem to be arguing—when a school official sees an object that he or she believes to be a bomb—the appropriate response would be to defer to a more knowledgeable authority. From the individual teacher’s perspective, that is the best way to protect his or her students.
However, false alarms are much more common than legitimate threats. And if every possible threat is escalated into a full police response, with bomb squads and searches and everything, then that’s a bad thing. It’s a tremendous drain on public resources, which leaves less to commit to other threats. It’s traumatic for everyone involved, and it creates a climate that’s hostile to the kind of individual experimentation and learning that a technology school should be encouraging.
Absolutely, 100 to 1 it's a real threat, a thousand to 1. A hundred thousand to one? How do you know when to call it in? If you think it's a bomb, you get your boss (principal) and if they don't know or aren't convinced, it's cop time.
You're right, 99.9999% it's not a bomb and 99.998% they don't call the cops. If they did, this would happen every single day. The fact we even have this news story tells me it's not all that common.
If the teacher and principal don't know and are unsure? Call the cops.
In this situation, we clearly have no idea what the kid said, or what the object looked like. We don't know what the VP said. Everyone is saying oh yea tech school. Do you know what they use technical schools for around here at least? Problem kids. Kids who probably couldn't handle a 4 year college so they send them to tech schools to get certificates in careers that don't need a bachelors. So you hear tech school and go "wow, smart kids", I hear it and go "oh god".
We know sooooo little it's crazy. We know the kid had a device. It was homemade and had parts that I, as a layperson, would see as parts that could be used as a bomb. The VP obviously thought that as well because even after talking to the kid, they called the cops.
We can't assume she was nuts because we know NOW it wasn't a bomb. Could she have been mental? Absolutely. She could be some crazy 70 year old lady who thinks every DS lite is a murder simulator. I have no clue.
That said, I think some people think this happens way more than it really does. And unless someone comes in and says otherwise, I just can't imagine the full bomb squad routine happens THAT often.
I'm almost positive most of it is "What is that?" "Uh, radio" "Oh, put it away and leave it at home" not "OMG COPS!"
Side note time! Our tech ed teacher decided to put a fake pipe bomb on the busted copy machine in the teacher's lounge with a note that said "problem solved". Yea the lady in the cleaning crew didn't get the joke.
The fact that it was very obviously a 2 dowels of wood with a clock taped to it didn't matter all that much.
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Yeah, the fact that this false positive was not caught earlier in the process indicates a problem with the system.
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Yeah, the fact that this false positive was not caught earlier in the process indicates a problem with the system.
But we don't know what happened. We don't know what it looked like. I can't say they overreacted unless I was there. Was there a video I didn't see? Do you guys know the VP? How are you guys making this call?
That's why I make general statements on what teachers and staff do when they see things they think could be explosive devices. Not this specific example, we weren't there
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In other articles relating to this incident there’s a quote calling the guy a “genius-type kid.” It doesn’t sound like he was a problem student, and I’m pretty sure that the reaction went a bit overboard. Every situation is different, and a full-scale response is not always the most appropriate reaction. If you go for maximum escalation in every case then you’re just crying wolf.
Anyway, I don’t see what’s so controversial about saying that there should be mechanisms in place to prevent false alarms from causing mayhem. Terrorism exists for the express purpose of causing mass panic, and if your response protocol does the same thing then what have you gained?
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It's not mass panic.
There weren't riots on the streets or people stampeding over each other.
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A school was closed down for hours and a home was searched. That's pretty mass in proportion to the magnitude of the threat (unrecognized gizmo.)
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I disagree.
Mass panic always paints a mental image of at least a citywide reaction. This was just one investigation.
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How is taking an action that helps ensure my safety and the safety of the children around me illogical? Remember, I think it could be a bomb.
I once built a device in electronics class. It was a black rectangular box with a switch on one side, and a small LED display grid on the front. What do you think that is? If I showed it to you, would you call the cops on me?
Actually, y'know what, I don't think we're getting anywhere here.
Welcome to the wonderful world of debating with BL.
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What I still can't wrap my head around is not the VP calling the police, it's not the VP and the police talking to the kid, the kid denying it's a bomb and then the police ignoring the statement and going to check if the device is not a bomb. Up until here it can be "sort of" justified. The VP and the police were wary of the kid and his device and so wanted to really check what was it. Sure a bit paranoid, but still within the bounds of reality.
What I can't understand is why after they determined the kid was telling the truth and that the device was not a bomb, they thought it was a good idea to check the kid's house and then after not finding a thing, to recommend the kid and the parents for counseling.
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I once built a device in electronics class. It was a black rectangular box with a switch on one side, and a small LED display grid on the front. What do you think that is? If I showed it to you, would you call the cops on me?
Do I think it's a bomb? That's kinda the hinge. You guys have been great saying "What if you see something you don't recognize" while you leave off "but it looks like a bomb to you"
But here is the kicker, you just said "I'm in electronics class". You've just changed the example. He's in a class not a hallway. He's under the supervision of a teacher. He's working on a project that the rest of the class is also probably working on, not some homemade thing he made on his own.
BUT! Even given your example, I am still allowed to follow my protocol: ask the electronics teacher.
Isn't that amazing? That I can ask the person who is in the room supposedly watching these children. I'd ask what that is and the teacher would say "They're making gigamabops"
That's the great part, I don't call 911. I get the principal and they decide if they get to call 911.
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Not once in history has a child of this age brought a bomb into school with the intention of detonating it and carried it around in public gleefully showing it off.
Probably not detonating it in a school, but detonating it after school at some place they consider safe. What I have heard of 60s, gleefully showing it off has probably taken place. But the intend has been to blow it up somewhere where it doesn't cause damage and not to hurt anyone. As I said earlier, kids don't always understand what they are doing.
And damn even if the adults knew what they were doing, during one army exercise where live ammunition was used a guy kicked an unexploded mortar shell for several dozens of metres (several times) and didn't realize what he was doing. Despite being told NEVER EVER EVER to touch/go close anything that could resemble an unexploded piece in the beginning of EVERY single live ammunition exercise. It is just so fun to know several of your men could have been blown up to smithereens had the shell gone off - and that you were among them!
Wearing electronics in/woven at your clothes at the airport can be counted as your constitutional right but also bloody stupid if you ask me. You are free to pee at the electric fence but I wouldn't do that either.
Besides, who thinks that he's gonna be flagged for special interest by the intelligence agencies after participating in this thread? Yay for us!
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Ok, I just read all 10 pages, and, uh....
*sigh*
Do I think it's a bomb? That's kinda the hinge. You guys have been great saying "What if you see something you don't recognize" while you leave off "but it looks like a bomb to you"
Then there is something wrong with you.
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There may or may not be, but this topic, or any topic really, isn't the place to discuss that.
Really, the issue here is that you are hung-up on adding the caveat "but it looks like a bomb." You've said yourself that you have no idea in hell what a bomb looks like, so how can you judge whether ANYTHING looks like a bomb?
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But here is the kicker, you just said "I'm in electronics class".
No I didn't, I said I built it in electronics class. Even then how would you know for sure? At my school we went to a special facility (the "skills center" that was shared by all three high schools in the district) to do this sort of thing that was pretty far off campus, so you wouldn't be able to ask the teacher. If I showed you this in the hallway of the high school, would you go tell the principle (who also has no idea what it is) that I might have a bomb?
He's working on a project that the rest of the class is also probably working on, not some homemade thing he made on his own.
It was an elective course and so only a handful at my school (out of 1500) actually would have taken the class, and even then the devices were more or less homemade. A generic black box with custom, hand soldered electronics in it. Anyone could have made something like that.
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This is getting pretty boring to be honest. I don't mind the odd bit of conjecture but this discussion is going round in more circles than the M25. . .
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I concur.
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Could you post the image of lady command I made in grognards please for me as i'm in the bar at my army unit and can't upload from my phone?
I'd appreciate it mate :)
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No I didn't, I said I built it in electronics class. Even then how would you know for sure? At my school we went to a special facility (the "skills center" that was shared by all three high schools in the district) to do this sort of thing that was pretty far off campus, so you wouldn't be able to ask the teacher. If I showed you this in the hallway of the high school, would you go tell the principle (who also has no idea what it is) that I might have a bomb?
Well no, you didn't say "and then I was outside" so that was a minor clarification point. You made it in a class and took it outside? Ok, we'll go with that.
But to answer the question, absolutely I would. And I shall list the reasons.
1. My own personal instincts. My own personal safety. I'm safer if I go get someone.
2. School policy. I could be fired, even if it isn't harmful. I also put myself open to lawsuits. Can you imagine if a device did go off and when they asked my why I ignored school policy I said "guys on the internet told me not to"? I don't think I would have much money, or even be free at the end of that.
Basically it boils down to this, my instincts say to, my school tells me to, the police tell me to. Doing these things will never get me in trouble. And on the other side is people who haven't told me their degrees or qualifications in law enforcement, child psychology or child education are telling me to do the exact opposite which COULD put me in danger.
And you guys are amazed I'm not listening to you.
Ok, I just read all 10 pages, and, uh....
*sigh*
Do I think it's a bomb? That's kinda the hinge. You guys have been great saying "What if you see something you don't recognize" while you leave off "but it looks like a bomb to you"
Then there is something wrong with you.
That homemade bombs, made from everyday objects, can look like many things and a layperson who can't identify it has to get someone who can?
You'd rather let me, who's not qualified, make the final decision?
This is getting pretty boring to be honest. I don't mind the odd bit of conjecture but this discussion is going round in more circles than the M25. . .
I'm just amazed. People who I'm almost positive aren't educators or law enforcement are telling me to ignore those people and listen to them.... well just because.
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Could you post the image of lady command I made in grognards please for me as i'm in the bar at my army unit and can't upload from my phone?
I'd appreciate it mate :)
It's probably best just to let it peter out rather than to lock it.
I'm just amazed. People who I'm almost positive aren't educators or law enforcement are telling me to ignore those people and listen to them.... well just because.
Nope, you haven't been told that.
Rereading the thread may be productive.
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I'm just amazed. People who I'm almost positive aren't educators or law enforcement are telling me to ignore those people and listen to them.... well just because.
Nope, you haven't been told that.
Rereading the thread may be productive.
[/quote]
I've had people in this thread tell me to pick up the device. I've had people tell me to not bother because the odds are low. I've been told to talk to the kid and get his word for it, even if I don't know what's going on.
Every one of these things is basically the opposite of what I'm supposed to do.
"Get someone who can make a decision"
It doesn't say unless he's a good kid, or he's too young, or they're really rare, or it's a technical school. There really aren't too many "buts" in this argument.
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And, again, the fact that you think it's a bomb in the first place is the problem.
A kid can use a lot of school supplies for self-injury. Like a paper clip, or a spare blade for a pencil sharpener. Why aren't you reporting those? Just like this 'unknown device', they are far more likely to have an innocent purpose.
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Here they are
"You confiscate it, take it to someone who knows what the hell they are talking about (science teacher, maybe? If that fails, sure, call the police), and then when you told by that someone that it is NOT a bomb, you give it back at the end of the day."
"And if you think the kid might be lying, take it and call his parents and ask them if they know anything about it."
"If the device is a bomb, sucks for you."
"Why evacuate the whole school through the hallways where the "bomb" is instead of getting the thing out of the school? "
"No, you're not, but if he tells you it's a motion detector and shows you how it works, then you probably could. Especially when you work at a tech school that encourages stuff like this."
"Nonetheless, I'd trust the kid."
"If he lies to you, then you're ****ed. Bomb goes off, people die."
"It should take 30 seconds to verify that it's not a bomb."
"HERE! Right here. You yourself have said that you can't evaluate whether a given device is a bomb or not. Fact of the matter is, if you don't know what the device is, odds are extremely in favor of it not being a bomb."
This is merely a partial list of all the things in this thread that have told me to do the exact opposite of what I'm supposed to do. OR telling me that when I follow their advice and just ignore it and I get blown up "oh well"
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And, again, the fact that you think it's a bomb in the first place is the problem.
A kid can use a lot of school supplies for self-injury. Like a paper clip, or a spare blade for a pencil sharpener. Why aren't you reporting those? Just like this 'unknown device', they are far more likely to have an innocent purpose.
Why is it a problem? I don't go running down the hall screaming "bomb" I don't tackle the kid. I don't dial 911 with my phone. I walk over and get someone. And I say "look at that"
In my years now of being in schools, both as a student and a teacher I have NEVER EVER EVER EVER seen a device I thought could be a bomb. I have seem some crazy things but I have never thought "bomb".
I've never walked up to a principal and said "look at that, could be a bomb." Years.
However, if I DO see one I WILL go tell someone. Not only because I have to, but I want to. It's safer for me.
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Because that's not what happened in this incident, which is what we're discussing.
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BL, no one is saying if you think something is a bomb you shouldn't do something about it. Everyone is stating that if your first thought about any unknown electronic device is "It may be a bomb.", you have a problem.
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Because that's not what happened in this incident, which is what we're discussing.
Yea I know, she thought it was. How do we know? She called the cops after talking to the kid. Was she wrong? Hell yea. Did she follow procedure?
Here's the problem, and why people calling for reform are going to have issues.
The only people who could tell you if it's a bomb are the incompetent people. You can't have a cop or a mechanical engineer follow these people around.
I'm just curious, are you trained in child psychology? Not a dig at you, I'm curious. Do you know words to look for? Behaviors? Do you know what and how to ask? What approach to take? I don't know, I don't have to know. I don't question the kid, I don't decide to call the police.
It's great to say the plan needs to be fixed, but it all hinges on the decisions of people who you don't trust to do it right. You say they don't know what they're doing, what can you do? Send them to bomb school?
I'm telling you right now, any plan that proposes not escalating because the people are untrained and the odds are low just will not fly. They're going to try to catch every single one and most of them will be false.
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BL, no one is saying if you think something is a bomb you shouldn't do something about it. Everyone is stating that if your first thought about any unknown electronic device is "It may be a bomb.", you have a problem.
But it's not. And I've said that dozens of times. I see unknown items all the time. And I've never thought they were bombs. In my entire life, outside of television, I have never seen an item I seriously considered to be "bomb like".
However, even if I am completely wrong if I DO ever have that thought, there is no doubt in my mind as to my course of action. None. The alternative is not acceptable to me.
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Okay BL, replace "you" with "Vice Principal of a technology-oriented school". No one here is questioning what to do about a potential bomb, we're just questioning the probability that an electronic device is a bomb and not something innocent.
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i love how i can read page 1, then jump right to page 10 (skipping pages 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9) and it's like the conversation is exactly the same.
wow people.
yes - i can honestly say that if i saw a kid walking around with something like that at school, i would MOST DEFINATELY tell the teacher.
by your logic, if you saw a kid at school concealing a gun, you wouldn't tell anyone, because IT'S PROBABLY AN EMPTY, UNLOADED GUN!!! DUH!!!
c'mon people... c'mon. we've seen enough kids bringing weapons to school IN THIS COUNTRY to warrant this response. I think everyone reacted just the way they should have.
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Thats the best validating synonym so far :yes:
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yes - i can honestly say that if i saw a kid walking around with something like that at school, i would MOST DEFINATELY tell the teacher.
by your logic, if you saw a kid at school concealing a gun, you wouldn't tell anyone, because IT'S PROBABLY AN EMPTY, UNLOADED GUN!!! DUH!!!
No, that's not what occurs by anybody's logic.
What we're saying is 'if you see a kid at school concealing a cell phone, don't tell anyone, because it's probably not a gun.'
c'mon people... c'mon. we've seen enough kids bringing weapons to school IN THIS COUNTRY
No, actually, we haven't. It's incredibly rare.
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I've personally seen at least 5 instances of weapons in a school, 2 of which were guns (or were at least BB guns).
There is a reason schools have metal detectors and police officers as security guards.
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Okay BL, replace "you" with "Vice Principal of a technology-oriented school". No one here is questioning what to do about a potential bomb, we're just questioning the probability that an electronic device is a bomb and not something innocent.
You don't run probability. You don't sit down with the parents of kids who were hurt and tell them you didn't follow your gut instinct because really, what are the odds?
They want to catch every single one. Will they? Probably not. Will a lot be false alarms? Surely. But these are people who are at their basics the protectors of children while they're there.
I doubt I could sleep if I saw an object that I genuinely thought was a harmful device to the children in my care and I did nothing. It's the same with child abuse. I'm not a doctor. I probably might not tell the difference between abuse and rough housing kids. I don't think I could NOT say anything. Ignoring the fact I'm almost required to tell, it would just weigh too much on me.
To me they are the same. One just happens more often than the other.
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@all: New arguments (without the 4kids, preferably), please.
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There is a reason schools have metal detectors and police officers as security guards.
... They have?
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This whole topic is a mishmash. . .
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This whole topic is a mishmash. . .
Not really, it fits within the general theme of school security.
You don't run probability.
You don't run it, you make your decisions according to it. We have an entire industry based on this concept.
EDIT: Make that two whole industries.
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It's lost cohesion.
And I spy two more industries.
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There is a reason schools have metal detectors and police officers as security guards.
Damn, where do you teach? :wtf:
My school has a nice sign saying "Visitors, please use this door" on the main doors. No other door has it, and at any given time, half of them are unlocked. I have never seen a metal detector in our school, and the only police officers that ever come are the D.A.R.E. guys. Our "security guards" exist only at lunch to keep kids from leaving and getting McDonalds or cutting in line.
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There is a reason schools have metal detectors and police officers as security guards.
Damn, where do you teach? :wtf:
My school has a nice sign saying "Visitors, please use this door" on the main doors. No other door has it, and at any given time, half of them are unlocked. I have never seen a metal detector in our school, and the only police officers that ever come are the D.A.R.E. guys. Our "security guards" exist only at lunch to keep kids from leaving and getting McDonalds or cutting in line.
Those are usually the inner city schools. Since many of them are gang infested it does make sense to do that, but in the suburban schools I've never seen one. My old high school did have a sheriff's deputy stationed there, but the other security gaurds were just that, security, not a part of the police force. But still no metal detectors.
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There is a reason schools have metal detectors and police officers as security guards.
Jeez man, I'm glad I don't go to that school.
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Inner city schools have metal detectors. My high school (and every high school in the area) has at least 1 security guard. I have never been to a high school in the Maryland area that DIDN'T have an armed security guard (not always cops). Suburbs included. Cops are actually cheaper than hiring your own security force I do believe, not sure though. I just always see local cops.
It's been that way since at least the late 90s for me.
That's my whole point. Maybe you guys went to super cool schools with no crime. It's probably more likely it was really low key and it was so infrequent you just never thought of it.
The fact that a lot of guys here have said "They hassled me for _____" just tells me it's everywhere. Maybe I just live in a hotbed of crime but if someone told me a kid brought a bomb to his school in our district or whatever, wouldn't surprise me. I've seen kids do nasty things.
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That's my whole point. Maybe you guys went to super cool schools with no crime.
I went to schools that had periodic bomb threats requiring full school evacs, fights, massive petty theft, and the usual assortment of messed up kids that were waiting to go off, plus an administration that generally didn't care if you were bullied. Plus there were also the usual assortment of kids that had to report to parole officers. Crime free? Hardly.
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That's my whole point. Maybe you guys went to super cool schools with no crime.
I went to schools that had periodic bomb threats requiring full school evacs, fights, massive petty theft, and the usual assortment of messed up kids that were waiting to go off, plus an administration that generally didn't care if you were bullied. Plus there were also the usual assortment of kids that had to report to parole officers. Crime free? Hardly.
And you were the only one who didn't go "Oh my god, metal detectors?! Security guards?!?!" So you probably know just how bad some schools can get, examples obviously above.
But on to the real question about teachers in your school. So they shouldn't go get someone to check out a device because why again? One would think a school with that amount of issues would be one to have teachers on a stronger lookout for bomb like things.
I doubt your teachers were trained police officers, what did they do in events that needed cops? What do you think teachers do in terms of fights, attacks, drug deals, etc etc? You get the administration and if they can't handle it, they call the cops. Just because bomb is the rarest of the rare doesn't mean you stop doing it.
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The fact that anyone thought this kid had a bomb in the first place is disturbing. The fact that the teacher didn't walk up, ask him, and get a good explanation is doubly disturbing. The fact that the problem escalated after the police and arson teams were called in is just absurd.
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The fact that anyone thought this kid had a bomb in the first place is disturbing. The fact that the teacher didn't walk up, ask him, and get a good explanation is doubly disturbing. The fact that the problem escalated after the police and arson teams were called in is just absurd.
Why? Because it's never happened before? It has. Because people think kids can't hurt other kids and teachers? They do (not often with bombs).
So why did the school and police keep going then? You can't say it was because of a heightened sense of paranoia because then they would have thought it was a real bomb. They either thought it was a bomb or they knew it wasn't and just decided to mess with the kid for laughs or something.
I'm curious as to what the solution is. Ask the kid and wait for a good explanation? Who gets to decide what good is? The teacher? This is just what happened here. They didn't believe him, so they called the cops.
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I've stated my position. We've already proceeded to explore it with no results. I'm not interested in debating it further.
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You haven't stated anything. You've given no new protocols, no new ideas. Nothing for teachers or administrators to look for. Nothing you could put in a school handbook or police guide.
You've given no insight into what teachers should be looking for. Any new child psychology tips to help point out at risk children from not at risk children that isn't already used.
You've given no safety checklist to avoid calling the cops. You've given no updates to police procedure to make sure they don't do it again.
You haven't gone through the police procedure to show us the glaring mistakes other than through the use of hindsight.
All you've done is come in and complain that the current situation is absurd but offer no new plans to deal with it.
It's like saying politicians are corrupt and we need to fix it, well that's great. How do we do that?
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I'm not interested in further discussion.
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Ok then, there are other people reading and posting in this thread.
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Indeed. It is kind of hard to discuss when you keep morphing every aspect of this discussion into the same line of reasoning, though.
Why? Because it's never happened before?
Because they already determined the damn thing wasn't a ******* bomb when they escalated the damn situation. Battuta said nothing in his last post about taking no action.
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Indeed. It is kind of hard to discuss when you keep morphing every aspect of this discussion into the same line of reasoning, though.
Why? Because it's never happened before?
Because they already determined the damn thing wasn't a ******* bomb when they escalated the damn situation. Battuta said nothing in his last post about taking no action.
Who determined it wasn't a bomb? The VP? The people who called in the police.... apparently for laughs? Why did the police even bother x-raying it if they knew it wasn't a bomb?
Is it that impossible that the VP just couldn't tell and decided to call in the people who could?
And for people complaining I'm all over the place, everyone else certainly is. My scenario (actually most school's scenarios) is to go up the ladder until someone says "I know what it is, it's not a bomb". There is no other line of reasoning. That is my preferred method. You keep going until you find someone who knows what they're talking about. That's it.
That's how it is now. People here (and in the comments sections of news articles and other forums) are up in arms about this. These people are hysterical, the system has to change.
But no one here (or elsewhere really) has said what to do, or how. What part of the school policy gets removed, or added in, or changed? You will never be able to remove calls in to the police about bomb like objects, ever. The only thing you can do is lower the number of calls, and then they will mostly be false alarms because the only people who can make that call are school officials, there is no one else there to help.
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Lower the level of paranoia to the point where the electronic object held by a child at an engineering school (and the child, recall, vouches it is not a bomb, but a functioning motion detector) is assumed to not be a bomb unless proven otherwise.
Your argument boils down to 'everything must have worked correctly, because surely they wouldn't have done anything incorrectly.'
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Who determined it wasn't a bomb?
The cops. BEFORE they decided to close the school and search the kids house, and after they just talked to him about it.
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Yes. That.
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Lower the level of paranoia to the point where the electronic object held by a child at an engineering school (and the child, recall, vouches it is not a bomb, but a functioning motion detector) is assumed to not be a bomb unless proven otherwise.
Your argument boils down to 'everything must have worked correctly, because surely they wouldn't have done anything incorrectly.'
I'm going to ignore the fact you said were done (I don't really mind, welcome back), on to the point at hand.
This is not a dig at you, so don't take it as such (that goes for everyone here really :nervous: )
Saying toning down paranoia is great, but how? It's not a dial. You can't just tell them to be less paranoid. Change the procedure somehow. Do something to mitigate the fact that the people who have to make these don't know what they're looking at.
And for the child part, kids lie. You can take the kid's word most of the time if there is backup evidence. But, as I'm pretty sure was the case in this example, if you don't believe him or aren't sure, you go get someone.
Kids lie all the time. Most of the time it's penny ante stuff. Who ate the cookies, did you do your homework. Other times it's more serious. Are you smoking, are you sexually active. And very very..... very rarely it's crazy stuff. Is that a bomb.
Kids lie about the little stuff and big stuff.
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Again, I've stated my position, I'm not interested in discussing it.
I am happy to continue elaborating my position, but I think it's internally consistent.
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Who determined it wasn't a bomb?
The cops. BEFORE they decided to close the school and search the kids house, and after they just talked to him about it.
You just said they knew it was a bomb before they escalated it? Wouldn't calling the cops qualify as an escalation? Aren't these the guys who brought in the x-ray machines and robots?
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Don't be an idiot. You know exactly what I meant. Escalation can happen by levels.
The point is, the cops were called. They talked to the kid. They determined the device was not a bomb.
Then they closed the school and searched his house.
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Again, I've stated my position, I'm not interested in discussing it.
I am happy to continue elaborating my position, but I think it's internally consistent.
Oh I know. Your position requires no elaboration because you just have vague ideas about what you think is wrong. You don't have a tangible plan or anything. It's just a position.
You want to elaborate? Tell me a plan. You can't send a message to school boards and tell them to scrap their old plans and go with this one "talk to the kid"
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I've explained what I think should have happened in the situation. Scotty has also done a good job of pointing out where the system failed.
Your argument is that the system must have succeeded because the system could not fail. "This happened," you say, "and it could only have happened because it was supposed to happen!"
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I've explained what I think should have happened in the situation. Scotty has also done a good job of pointing out where the system failed.
Your argument is that the system must have succeeded because the system could not fail. "This happened," you say, "and it could only have happened because it was supposed to happen!"
I've never used the word success. This is not a win/lose situation. It goes teacher -> administration -> cops. You don't "win" (or lose) if you get to the end.
The only time I would consider anything a success is when the object is identified. Either as a bomb or not.
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I've explained what I think should have happened in the situation. Scotty has also done a good job of pointing out where the system failed.
Your argument is that the system must have succeeded because the system could not fail. "This happened," you say, "and it could only have happened because it was supposed to happen!"
I've never used the word success. This is not a win/lose situation. It goes teacher -> administration -> cops. You don't "win" (or lose) if you get to the end.
The only time I would consider anything a success is when the object is identified. Either as a bomb or not.
*facepalm*
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Don't be an idiot. You know exactly what I meant. Escalation can happen by levels.
The point is, the cops were called. They talked to the kid. They determined the device was not a bomb.
Then they closed the school and searched his house.
Who made these decisions to close the school and search the house? Why do you think they made those decisions?
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*facepalm*
Identifying an object is a failure then? That is the only thing this entire process is designed to do. That's the only reason this process exists: to identify objects that are believed to be potentially harmful.
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Don't be an idiot. You know exactly what I meant. Escalation can happen by levels.
The point is, the cops were called. They talked to the kid. They determined the device was not a bomb.
Then they closed the school and searched his house.
Who made these decisions to close the school and search the house? Why do you think they made those decisions?
Because they are paranoid and overreacting.
Again, you're making the argument that 'they did it, therefore they must have had good reasons! And they only did it because they had good reasons!'
Circular.
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Because they are paranoid and overreacting.
Again, you're making the argument that 'they did it, therefore they must have had good reasons! And they only did it because they had good reasons!'
Circular.
Of course the teachers overreact. They're not bomb techs. They're not qualified to make that decision so they get someone higher.
As for the circular logic part, I am trying to figure out why a school official would call a device in for any other reason.
I mean help me out here. They see the kid, go "oh my god". Bring him in, kid says "it's a motion detector". VP says "you know, you're right. Now that you've told me, we can see it isn't harmful and is just a project you made....... ........ ........ Now let me go call the cops and tell them I think it's a bomb."
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We're talking about police officers and an arson team here, not teachers.
And yes, that latter scenario is apparently exactly what happened.
The system is severely ****ed up.
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We're talking about police officers and an arson team here, not teachers.
I've spent this entire thread talking about teachers. I've just spent 12 pages arguing whether or not it was in my best interests (as a school staff member) to tell the administration, and if they don't know, call the cops.
I have quotes and quotes of people questioning me on how crazy I am for thinking an object is a bomb, or the odds on a school attack, or about talking to the children. I've spent the entire thread talking about school response.
All of the sudden we're not talking about teachers, we're talking about police. And I think I have a good idea about why the sudden change.
And yes, that latter scenario is apparently exactly what happened.
The system is severely ****ed up.
You see, I would think that would qualify as something like filing a false police report. When you tell the police something you know to be false, it tends to negatively affect your work and your freedom.
I kind of think it's funny that "a school official is unsure of the safety of an object and calls in the police who check it out" is FAR less likely than "a conspiracy of school and police officials who pretend a device they know is harmless to be harmful and go through all the motions and waste time and money for a reason not entirely clear"
What do the school and police get out of knowingly "investigating" something they know isn't true? You're telling me these people knew it was a false alarm and instead of doing what they're supposed to do, which is stop, decided to keep going.
You can't tell me they're paranoid and overreacting and THEN tell me they know it's false.
If they're paranoid, calling in the police and the police scouring everything makes sense: they're paranoid and they think it's true.
If they know it's false, but do it anyway, the action makes no sense because there is no reward at the end. What do they get out of it.
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They'd not be doing their jobs if they just enquired/searched/whatever and left without due process of "post-sales care" so to say...
This topic irks me........
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We're talking about police officers and an arson team here, not teachers.
I've spent this entire thread talking about teachers. I've just spent 12 pages arguing whether or not it was in my best interests (as a school staff member) to tell the administration, and if they don't know, call the cops.
I have quotes and quotes of people questioning me on how crazy I am for thinking an object is a bomb, or the odds on a school attack, or about talking to the children. I've spent the entire thread talking about school response.
All of the sudden we're not talking about teachers, we're talking about police. And I think I have a good idea about why the sudden change.
Because you caught up with what everyone else has been talking about.
What do the school and police get out of knowingly "investigating" something they know isn't true? You're telling me these people knew it was a false alarm and instead of doing what they're supposed to do, which is stop, decided to keep going.
This is not what I said.
You may reread my earlier posts if you wish to further examine my position.
I find your argument totally incoherent. It appears to start from a position and then use that position to justify the starting position.
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Anyway, I'm sorry, but I just don't think further debate is going to get us anywhere. We appear to be departing from mutually incompatible assumptions that have not been examined or rectified.
As I've said, my position stands. It does not appear to be getting across, and I am happy to blame that on faults in my own presentation. Nonetheless I think that it has been adequately registered.
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*facepalm*
Identifying an object is a failure then? That is the only thing this entire process is designed to do. That's the only reason this process exists: to identify objects that are believed to be potentially harmful.
GB stated that your argument was that ''[...] the system must have succeeded because the system could not fail." You stated that you didn't use the word 'success', and then ignored everything else he stated. You then stated that it was a success (the system, I'm assuming).
To reiterate:
*facepalm*
Oh, and I would thank you to stop putting words in my mouth.
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This topic started off badly and went downhill from there.
(http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/8485/ladylock.gif)