Police Arrest Woman Allegedly Wearing Fake Bomb at Boston Airport

You are trying too hard not to see it. It was intended to look like a bmb

No I'm not and no it wasn't. Looking at it, it is obvious what it is. I can idenfy everything on it as harmless. It is a breadboard, a number of LEDs and a battery. There is no harmful device that can be made with any combination of those items. Furthermore, she had been wearing it around town for months and other MIT students do similar things. If she had wanted to make it look like a bomb she would have.

HollyB - If you don't see the difference between blinky lights and a lit fuse then I am incapable of dumbing down my argument sufficiently to satisfy you.

BC, I am saying that action needs to be taken immediately when a possible problem is seen. This is a situation where seconds are involved in making a decision. There is nothing wrong with taking immediate action, stopping a potential problem, and then sorting it out later. If it turns out to be nothing - good. Which in this case, is what happened. There is no reason to ridicule the authorities for doing their job. In a situation like this there is not alot of time to study each and every component seen and possible NOT SEEN on this shirt.

, I am saying that action needs to be taken immediately when a possible problem is seen

That's fine. You see something suspicious, you investigate and determine that nothing is amiss, then you drop the whole thing. You don't aggravate it by arresting her and charging her with crimes when it is clear that there was no malicious intent. And even if you do arrest her, you drop the charges as soon as it becomes clear there was no malicious intent. The carrying on by the state police spokesman suggests that they are in face-saving mode, probably because of their last bungle.

There is no reason to ridicule the authorities for doing their job

They aren't doing their job. They have bungled the last two false arrests they made and in addition, allowed the hijacking of four airliners and the deaths of three thousand people. They are 0 for 6 now, and that's just in Boston - that doesn't count the nursing mothers and wheelchair-bound grandmas they've harassed all over the country. They're idiots and there's no way around that.

there is not alot of time to study each and every component seen and possible NOT SEEN on this shirt.

Sorry, have to post once more to address this.

We don't arrest people based on what we DON'T SEE. We don't arrest people for threats we imagine using our pea-brains. We arrest people based on probable cause. We question people given reasonable suspicion, which is a somewhat lower standard.

I'll grant that the general level of ignorance among the police would result in the failure to identify something any high school physics student could see was harmless. Fine. That gives us reasonable suspicion at best. That means: question the girl. She says it's harmless, shows you the blinky lights, and it's done.

You don't "take her down" and arrest her at machine-gun point for having blinky lights (what the hell are cops doing with machine guns? This isn't Nazi Germany and besides, machine guns are illegal in MA so the criminals don't have them :^) ). For God's sake, what purpose do blinky lights have on a bomb? None! Bombs don't have blinky lights!

Unfortunately for her, the inept cops have painted themselves, and her, into a corner. If they don't prosecute her they look like the asses they are. So she'll be prosecuted so they don't look stupid, not because she really did anything wrong (except mistakenly believe that cops were reasonably intelligent, rational, educated people).

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