School sees science project of 11-year-old as threat — This is incredible. Exactly how stupid are these people? No wonder the kids learn nothing in California schools.
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.
Found by Kevin Terminella via Twitter.
The polise authorities recommed counseling for both the parents and the child.
The vice principal is the one needing counseling. He caused panic and fear for the whole school, the parents and the child.
The vice principal should also pay for the cost of down time at the school and the police authorities’ time.
Because of some paranoid person, a 11 year old child could have had a felony record.
#13 Newsflash, you have a new president & vice president. Sheeple!
Perfect example of how the terrorists are winning! The other example is the two wars we have fought in which we have lost many lives and spent billions of dollars. Yeah America.
Does anyone else want more info in the liquid filled motion detection device or is it just me. Not a bad idea for s student. It is amazing what could have been learned is the teachers and administrators had just asked the student.
Bomb those idiots with emails of disgust…
http://www.mtechmiddle.org/apps/staff/?rn=6669052
A few months ago I woke up to helicopters hovering over my house. Three blocks away there is a high school, where an ex-student had brought in several pipe bombs and started throwing them. He was also wearing an explosive vest. The guy was tackled by one of the teachers and kept from detonating himself. All this in a neighborhood where houses start at 1/2 million dollars.
http://ktvu.com/news/20531360/detail.html
In the OP article, a kid brings in a strangely wired device, is interviewed by police and they find other strange devices in the kid’s backpack. Suspicions rise and the school is evacuated while they make sure that the kid is not gun and explosive nut. Well done.
Thus is not a story about terrorism, it is a story about caution based on repeated bad experiences in other schools.
“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”
A.) I really want to see a transcript of that conversation
B.) Why does it take a A MAST robot taking x-rays and pictures to determine it harmless
when
C.)the project was made of an empty half-liter Gatorade bottle with some wires and other electrical components attached. There was no substance inside.
Keystone cops don’t begin to explain this.
‘…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.’
This is a problem of degrees.
Someone who has dangerous materials but does nothing dangerous in not a danger. The car you drive is a dangerous weapon filled with almost 100 pounds of explosive gas, are you a danger because you have a car?
We all have to use our intelligence and experience to make rational decisions. By the account, the VP acted irrationally.
And they was using up all kinds of cop equipment that they had hanging around the police officer’s station.
They was taking plaster tire tracks, foot prints, dog smelling prints, and they took twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us.
-a tribute to Alice’s Restaurant
HE SHOULD HAVE TO PAY FOR THE COST OF OPERATING THE BOMB ROBOT! THE PUNISHMENT NEEDS TO BE MORE SEVERE!
and on, and on, and on. we’re fucked.
Are you REALLY suggesting that the KID, who is 11, should be PENALIZED? Un-F-ing believable. The VP is an idiot. These things are setting precedents. If they continue, the smartest people left in the country will LEAVE. The kid should be given an A, for first thinking of this, and them, having to tolerate so much idiocy on so many different levels from so many people..Most of us who are above 35 used to blow stuff up with M-80′s for FUN weekly. Now, we are so afraid of Bin Laden popping up in some rural place, we have totally lost common sense and our sense of what our country is, and who the people are that make it up. UN Believable..
Terrorists cannot destroy America. They can only scare America into destroying itself.
Where can we go?
Who would have us?
It is time to leave.
@ Awake:
The horrific event you describe, and the tactics used to respond to it IN NO WAY translate as a REASONABLE RESPONSE to the situation described in the story above. Oddly enough, according to your account, a SCHOOL EMPLOYEE, acting with selfless BRAVERY, brought about the safe disarming of the suspect. A suspect who was a FORMER student, who had no approved access or reason to be on the campus IN THE FIRST PLACE. His presence alone indicated a basic breach of campus security. The CHILD in the above story was a STUDENT at the school in question, and had every right to be there, and should have been recognized on some PERSONAL LEVEL by the administrator in question. The kid attends the school DAILY for crying out loud. The VP had only to inquire about the nature of the project, and contact the affiliated teacher, and the child’s PARENTS to discern the non-threatening nature of the project. In related news, The Boy Scouts of America can no longer carry SWISS ARMY KNIVES because of the deadly threat they pose to law-abiding American citizens. I am disgusted with the whining terrorists-in-our-soup mentality that has gripped otherwise reasonable people in this country. Every freedom we strip away out of unreasoning fear is another victory for the comparatively few murderous assholes who hide in cracks and crevices, attempting to change the world by scaring it to death. Stop terrorizing and haranguing our own kids, and each other, and put in place RESPONSIBLE and EFFECTIVE security measures that address actual threats instead of attempting to placate the populace with SECURITY THEATRICS.
The USA is rapidly becoming a joke, but a dangerous one that can do great harm to others and to its own citizens.
Sheesh. If I brought a bottle of water to that school, I guess I would be considered a potential bomber.
I remember when I was in grade school I had a science project for a science fair and I tested different rocket fuels. Basically some of the mixtures were black powder or sugar powder based. The teachers and students didn’t even care about it being dangerous.
‘Cause there’s a red, under my bed
And there’s a little yellow man in my head
That kid, was one dangerous dude.
A MAST robot took pictures of the device and X-rays were evaluated. About 3 p.m., the device was determined to be harmless.
Gatorade is now terrified that the X-ray pictures will be posted on the internet. In a news release following the incident, a spokesman for Gatorade said, “If God had meant for people to see our naked bottles, we wouldn’t have invented labels.”