Well, I mean, before 9/11, you’d have missed the part of every previous terrorist act where guys with box-cutters hijacked airplanes and crashed them into buildings, right?
Honestly, I’m astounded by the degree to which people in this thread seem to think that they could *definitely * recognize a bomb, no problem, and after carefully examining photographs of the hoodie out of context when they already knew it wasn’t a bomb are able to state with certainty that it’s obviously not a bomb.
Unless I am missing something, there is no “Style Guide for Homemade Explosive Devices.” The idea that “a bomb couldn’t possibly have an LED in the shape of a star on it” is just false. Is it so hard to conceive of the possibility that someone could make a fanciful explosive device, wear it on the outside, attract attention, and then detonate it? I don’t think that’s much of a leap, really.
He was bipolar and had been on long international flights. When he started getting agitated, his wife alerted the crew that he was bipolar and starting to go into a manic episode. When he escalated, she kept screaming to security that he was bipolar and did not have a bomb. Whatever the decision-making of the crew and security teams, they had a lot of information that this was a person with a mental illness behaving in way that was consonant with that diagnosis under the cirumstances.
It wasn’t a fake bomb. It wasn’t meant to look like a bomb. It wasn’t on the “outside”. That picture I linked to upthread? The cops had the hoodie inside-out. All that was visible was the little light-up star. It was meant to look like a hoodie with a little light-up star on the front, because the chick’s name is Star. It wasn’t a crazy stunt. It was a misunderstanding. She was just there to pick somebody up at the airport and she ended up with a machine gun in her face. There was no malicious intent. You are crying for the blood of a geek girl who never intended to do anything wrong–and who, in fact, did nothing wrong.
But it doesn’t even remotely resemble anything dangerous.
Admittedly anything could be a bomb - remember the ‘shoe bomber?’ - but the flipside of that epiphany is that anyone can be arrested for carrying a “fake bomb”. After all, we all usually wear shoes, carry cellphones, etc. - any one of which could be a bomb!
What “resembles something dangerous?” Honestly, I wasn’t there. I don’t know how it looked in context. I don’t know how she was acting. I don’t know whether there were wires sticking into the Play-Doh, or why the Play-Doh was there at all, or why she offered no explanation for it. I don’t know if it “resembled” something dangerous, and all I’m saying is that the people in this thread who are so sure and certain that this was a ridiculous over-reaction are maybe operating with the benefit of a lot of hindsight.
cite for the hoodie being inside out? Because that doesn’t make sense either. The picture shows a circuit board, attached to the sweatshirt, with some LEDs sticking out of it. If it was inside out in that picture, the LEDs would have been against her chest and wouldn’t have been visible at all.
Here’s another article with some clearer pictures. Note the logo of a running stick figure on fire under the circuit board - it doesn’t look to me like the sweatshirt is inside out.
Also from that article: “The employee asked about the plastic circuit board on her chest, and Simpson walked away without responding” If that’s true, then she’s even stupider than I thought. If you’re in an airport and someone official asks you “What’s that odd collection of batteries and wires attached to you?” you should answer them.
BTW, IIRC the original article I cited in OP said/implied there were wires in the play-doh. That articles been updated multiple times, and it no longer says that. That’ll probably be a huge factor in what she’s eventually convicted of, if anything.
Sure, but how likely is anyone to be alarmed at your wearing shoes until you take one off and try to light a fuse running into it, a la Richard Reid? IOW, the “shoe bomber” wasn’t arrested because he was wearing shoes (oh noes!) but because he was trying to detonate a bomb that, incidentally, was hidden in his shoe. So it’s the exact opposite of this situation: This girl was sporting something that apparently looked like a bomb (at least a little bit) but wasn’t, while the shoe bomber was sporting something that didn’t look like a bomb, but was.
So what are the authorities to do? Seems like after the device goes off is a pretty bad time to determine for sure whether or not it really was a bomb. (BOOM! “Yep, bomb.”)
ETA: And I’ve looked at those pictures too, and it’s not immediately apparent to me, without close study, that what you’ve got going on there is “only” LEDs in the shape of a star. I mean, I can see that now, when it’s pointed out, but I doubt I’d see that if I was a police officer racing across the parking lot in response to an alert to a potential explosive device.
Well, here’s a whole bunch of somebodies that are now crying “overreaction”.
You can’t have it both ways, people. If the security is supposed to take each threat seriously, stuff like this will happen.
Yes, it’s a lot more likely that a real terrorist would try to sneak themselves in via a less obvious fashion, but if we couldn’t be bothered to act for a girl in a hoodie sporting a star-shaped blinking light thing, it’s not a good sign.
See, this is the crux of the matter. There are really three questions here:
Was what she was wearing/way she was acting sufficient to raise suspicions in a reasonable security officer? - If so, getting checked out is of course warranted.
Was what she was doing something that a reasonable person in the context of that time and place (but without security training) would consider threatening? If so, she deserves admonishment of some variety, for causing trouble and hassle, because she ought to have known better.
Was what she was doing something that was a deliberate attempt on her part to create a scare or bomb hoax? If so, she ought to be charged with a criminal offence.
To my mind, at least according to the limited info we have, it isn’t even clear that her flashing LED thingie rises to meet #1. But we weren’t there, we aren’t security trained, so who knows? Give security the benefit of the doubt.
It is very unlikely that it reaches #2 (unless we accept extreme paranoia as reasonable), and pretty well impossible, unless there are facts we don’t know, that it reaches #3.
I don’t think its rational to expect Joe Law Enforcement to be able to automatically tell if a device is fake, expecially from a distance. And they shouldn’t have to, especially in a situation like this. Here you have a person of privilege trying to prove a point of some sort- law enforcement shouldn’t have to then be put in the position to have to determine if she’s a threat, if its fake, etc, nor should they be chided for not realizing that she’s a daft chick doing this for shits and giggles.
Blame the girl, same as in cases where asshats brandish fake guns and get shot, and then the cops are blamed for not realizing the gun was a toy. She has to be given some sort of serious sentence, to discourage other people from doing this.
IIRC, the 9/11 guys and the shoebomb idiot were on planes. Same with the supposed “shampoo bomb” plotters. I didn’t see any evidence that the “hoody bomber” made any attempt to get herself or anything on a plane. Hell, when they arrested her she was outside the terminal. Doesn’t impress me as too huge of a threat.
I guess I just don’t buy into the marketed paranoia that because the 9/11 planes took off and landed from airports, airports are necessarily terribly dangerous places. Hell, the planes flew into tall buildings and I’m working (well, not really hard. It IS Friday p.m.) in one right now! I’m so frightened - someone protect me from I know not what!
The recurrence of 9/11 would have been prevented simply by reinforcing cockpit doors. The majority of the rest is essentially very expensive theater.
I admit I appear to be in the vast minority, for preferring to live in a society where there were certain risks, but where you were not subjected to today’s level of security and surveillance. Barring what I consider a reasonable threat, I am not reassured by having more and more automatic weapons around me. Obviously, very many/most folks differ.
Since I often think of what actually would be credible threats, one could probably get a decent bang for the buck by spilling various pathogens in airport lavatories, to get maximum dispersal. Heck, maybe just in an atomizer in the international terminal. It would take quite a decent explosion in the right place to cripple down an airport. But the authorities seem to have no difficulty accomplishing the same thing - such as on the occasions when they shut down service for hours on the suspicion that someone ran the wrong way past a dozing security guard…
I’m going to strengthen my previous reply and say you’re flat-out wrong - the circuit board was on the outside of the shirt. See this video where the police show off the sweatshirt. Either she wrote “Socket to me - Course VI” on the inside of the sweatshirt, or the circuit board was on the outside.
I see now that it was on the outside. But I stand by the rest of my statement. It was not a fake bomb. It does not look like a bomb, and it was not intended to look like a bomb. It was a misunderstanding.
I disagree, strenuously. They’re the ones who are supposed to distinguish threat from non-threat. They’re the professionals. It is entirely rational to expect that somebody in the organization should be qualified to take a cursory glance at a circuit board and determine whether it’s hooked up to a bunch of LEDs or something more insidious: maybe not the guy with the badge, but somebody in a back room somewhere. It is madness to allow the fates of ordinary civilians to be subject to the unfiltered paranoia of barely-educated goons.
Randall Larsen, founding director of the Department of Homeland Security, says those charged with keeping us secure aren’t focusing on the right things. Within two weeks of 9/11, he was able to get a surgical mask and a vial containing a “weaponized biological agent” past security into Cheney’s office. Security asked him about the mask but not the vial.
I have a whole family of cousins whose last name is “Simpson” and who have new-age-y first names like “Sierra Wildrose” and “Joyful”.
Fortunately, none of them is “Star”.
It was a home-made electronic device that had no obvious purpose… at an airport!
You must not have ever travelled with “unusual” electronic equipment. At work, we had to travel with a projector that looked a “little diferent” than the projectors they’ve usually seen. They had us take it apart and show them how it worked, just to be sure it really was a projector. It still looked like a projector, just newer and fancier than what airport security was used to seeing. That was before 9/11.
These days they make you boot up your laptop. I had to show them the screen of my digital camera in operation. This is standard op for easily recognizable devices. Showing up at the airport with a unidentifiable home-made electronic device, is pretty stupid.
ETA: P.S. When we pulled apart some of the components of the projector, my co-worker and I managed to break it. Our boss was pissed.
And they did determine it was not a threat. At which point she was held for having a hoax device, which is ALSO A CRIME. It’ll be up to the DA, and possibly later a judge and jury to determine if (a) it was actually a hoax device, and (b) she had intent to cause anxiety or fear.