The Americans aren’t very good at this sort of thing. The story of Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year old pupil at MacArthur High School, has been all over the media the last few days, but I particularly like this write-up from BGR which proves that some Americans at least have got it together.
Ahmed brought a homemade clock into school to show off his technical skills to his teachers. One of them decided it was a bomb and called in the police. Ahmed was then questioned by four of them, handcuffed, and taken to a juvenile detention centre. At no point did he say it was anything other than a clock. Conversely, at no point did the police consider that it was anything other than a bomb.
“We have no information that he claimed it was a bomb,” one of the cops told The Dallas Morning News. “He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation.”
Texas police don’t appear to be all that bright, because like many of their kind they insist on trying to use big words when interviewed. They really shouldn’t. If it was a clock, what possible “broader explanation” could Ahmed give?
At the time of the original story, the police were still thinking of charging Ahmed with making a “hoax bomb”. Remember that he never claimed it was a bomb, and he maintained throughout that it was a clock, so quite how this “hoax bomb” fits in is anyone’s guess. The Texas police trying to save face, I would guess.
I don’t want to seem to be paraphrasing the BGR article, but they’ve done such a good write up, and it’s pretty much what I’d have written if I’d got there first. For that reason, I apologise for also mentioning that Ahmed is Muslim, although as BGR’s follow up article notes, he is a native Texan (by which I assume they mean he was born there).
Mind you, when you look at the picture of Ahmed’s clock – which you initially assume to be mechanical (well, I did), but which turns out to be digital – you can see how lesser intellects might become alarmed. It’s about the size of a small briefcase. On the other hand, it clearly operates from the mains and it has a huge display. Of course, it also has no explosives in it.
It’s a sad indictment of the times we live in that such distrust exists. This extends to the support that has been created for Ahmed by his sisters, as mentioned in the Dallas Morning News.
Is it only me who thinks that the hash tag @IStandWithAhmed could be considered inflammatory? You know, with the unfortunate combination of the letters “I” and “S”? Yes, very sad times.
In a nutshell, Texas police could easily have realised early on that it was a false alarm. But for whatever reason, they didn’t. In the meantime, Ahmed has got an invite to the White House to meet President Obama.