Posted on 09/22/2007 6:37:50 AM PDT by Turret Gunner A20
http://home.peoplepc.com/psp/newsstory.asp?cat=TopStories&referrer=welcome&id=20070922/46f49340_3ca6_1552620070922-1497302150
Lawyer: Fake Bomb Charge an Overreaction
BOSTON - The MIT student who walked into Logan International Airport wearing a computer circuit board and wiring on her sweat shirt claimed it was harmless artwork. But to troopers who arrested her at gunpoint, it was a fake bomb.
Nineteen-year-old Star Simpson was charged Friday with possessing a hoax device. Her attorney described the charge as offbase and "almost paranoid," arguing at a court hearing that she did not act in a suspicious manner and had told an airport worker that the device was art.
(Excerpt) Read more at home.peoplepc.com ...
We might never know the truth.
She seems to be drawn to "critical" situations.
What's that prove? She is/was on the staff of The Tech, and that location is a stone's throw from her dorm room.
yeah the putty was weird, i’ll give you that.
maybe she designed the shirt for a geeky club meeting at MIT and then decided to take some putty along with it to the airport thinking it would be an amusing afterthought. maybe she thought she was so obviously not a terrorist it would be amsuing. who knows
i do know that shooting her in the head for carrying some putty and lights in the shape of a star on her chest would have been the worst thing in the world for the police to have done.
this is a free country is it not? she was making no threat. unless this is some society where no one can wear anything slightly out of the ordinary in an airport without taking a bullet for it
would she have been shot for wearing that in a crowded restaurant? she was not even on a plane or boarding one
She’s a moron, plain and simple.
It doesn't take a bomb expert. Just someone with enough common sense to know that a real suicide bomb would be concealed, not blatantly calling attention to itself with blinking lights.
Nothing.
That point merits consideration. The area where she was is crawling with cops. Yet the person who spotted her 'bomb' was Maria Moncayo, a clerk at the information desk, not a security officer. The police who then swarmed Star Simpson were on an adrenaline high based on a bogus report. I find it hard to believe that her 'bomb' was not observed and dismissed by at least one security person before she spoke with Ms. Moncayo.
How do those sneakers decorated with blinking LEDs do at the airport these days?
You certainly could, but it would be way overengineered for a suicide vest. You would need no electronics at all unless you are going for something more sophisticated, such as remote triggering or time delay or proximity detection (as in a mine).
On the other hand, an MIT level jihad vest would probably have a circuit board programmed to recognize the words "Allahu akbar!" shouted out by its wearer. That way it could be set off even if the wearer is reaching for the sky as police approach.
And as for the Play Doh, even if it were actually C4, it would be completely harmless the way Star was carrying it (you need a detonator inserted and wired up to get it to go).
No one is advocating shooting first. The very first thing done was she was questioned. She then refused to answer questions and fled. Is that normal behavior for someone with "a radio, a camera, a personal computer, an ipod, a cell phone, a pacemaker, a pc battery life extender, a cellphone fast recharger ..., an electric razor, and those flashy wheeley running shoes"? Why didn't she explain that it was a piece of art and show what it did? Unless of course she was trying to cause a panic and got caught.
The trouble began when Ms. Simpson, wearing a lighted circuit board sewn to her black hooded sweatshirt, walked up to a customer service desk at Logan International Airport and asked about an arriving flight carrying a passenger she was to meet. A nine-volt battery was attached to the circuit board, and Ms. Simpson carried a wad of modeling clay in one hand.The employee, fearing that the board was a bomb, “asked Ms. Simpson what was on her chest, and she didn’t answer,” Major Pare said. “Ms. Simpson then turned around and left the building.”
This sounds to me like hearsay. Can't this information clerk speak for herself? Does Maria Moncayo speak English as a first language? This smells to me like the typical cop CYA operation where "We made a mistake" is not in their lexicon.
Honestly ask yourself when was the last time you heard any government agency own up to a f up?
Just as people know since 9/11 that you can’t joke about bombs, common sense says you don’t carry something, particuarly on your chest, that resembles a bomb. Especially in a town that went through the comedy central promotion 8 months before.
Bottomline: you absolve her, I don’t. This incident happened the day after she had a practical reason to have that thing on. She woke up and decided to put it on again.
In other words, the police did a good job of dealing with a potentially bad situation caused by a jackass.
And btw, the electronics was 7th grade stuff. Evidently, MIT ain't what it used to be.
My point exactly.
A cop reproting the testimony of a witness to the press is not "hearsay" Perry Mason, it is a cop briefing the press.
Here you are very very wrong and have simply failed to pay attention. A lot of my interlocutors have been calling for shooting first and asking questions later.
... She refused to answer questions and fled.
This is a distortion. She simply left, and did not go very far. The information booth attendant is not a security person, and has no authority to question or detain. Simpson was perfectly within her rights to turn around and leave when she was asked what was "on her chest," which might be interpreted to be a rude question. Here is what the article said further:
A Massachusetts Port Authority staffer manning an information booth in the terminal became suspicious when Simpson - wearing the device - approached to ask about an incoming flight, Pare said. Simpson then walked outside, and the staffer notified a nearby trooper...The trooper, joined by others with submachine guns, confronted her in front of the terminal...."She was immediately told to stop, to raise her hands and not to make any movement, so we could observe all her movements to see if she was trying to trip any type of device," Pare said. "Had she not followed the protocol, we might have used deadly force."
She did not flee. She cooperated apparently, and it turned out she did not have any device she could detonate.
Is everyone here a panic mechanic? The picture is not of a fire, but of a firetruck sitting outside of a building having responded to an alarm. I suppose we don't know that Simpson did not set off the alarm and then standby with her camera at the ready to photograph the ensuing panic.
However, conservatives are supposed to believe in objective and demonstrable fact. If we base all of our suspicions on things we don't know we will go downhill fast as a society.
Let the terrorists learn a lesson: Better hide the circuitry under the garment, least you be suspect!
While I believe that this is sarcasm, based on your subsequent posts, given the abject stupidity of most posts on this thread, I have to point out that terrorists have demonstrated the world over that they learned this lesson back before Cassius and Brutus plotted the assassination of Caesar.
I would add that my dog knows this lesson, lest anyone think we are giving away a vital national secret.
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