leejo

I don't think the police were pointing their guns at her simply because of the threat she posed to people around her but also because they needed to detain and question her, and they had to do it in a way that didn't get themselves blown up.

Surely we can all appreciate that they had to treat the threat as real until proven otherwise, and we can all appreciate that you don't just let someone with a possible bomb hop in their car and ride away.

I imagine that with a little imagination we can also all think of non-harmless uses for such a stunt. If she had been one of the bad guys, learning that security is really only very tight once you pass through certain checkpoints is good information isn't it? Learning how easily one might disappear once outside the terminal is useful too. Etc.

I think the police responded in the precisely correct manner - rapidly, in force, and no-one got shot.

Tarenth

If she WAS shot then I still wouldn't blame the trooper for doing so. Hindsight is 20-20 but how about using some foresight before jumping to conclusions and saying people overreacted.

A trooper approaches someone with material in hand that resembles plastic explosives with an electronic device attached to her body. The first thought that goes through your mind at that point is "If that is a bomb and she hits the detonator then I and everyone around me will die".

If you're keeping up with technology and terrorism propaganda then you know that the detonator could be ANYWHERE and ANYTHING. You can wire a pressure switch down your pants to the toe of your shoe so if you press down with your foot the things go off. You could place the switch on your shoulder so grabbing your shoulder and pressing like it was sore would set it off. Hell, you could have two seperated connectors on your shoulderblades so the act of shrugging your shoulders would complete the circuit and set the damn things off. I'm not saying they're all good ideas, but the potential is endless and the only way to stop someone with so many avenues for success is to neutralize them before they make any sudden or suspicious moves. How do you do that? Simple. Any sudden moves and you get shot. Most effective way I can think of to stop someone with a bomb aside from taking them down by surprise.

I'm not security trained so I didn't take the number of classes and lessons they have on what and what not to do. However I can tell you that if I'm looking at someone who looks like they could have a bomb on them the last thing that would go through my mind is "Is that C4 or playdough in her hands?"

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Bc2ID

In case you were unaware..itmakes no difference where she was... The federal rule applies across all of the airport property. It does not matter if she toed the airport boundary with the item she had, she still would have been charged with a federal crime. PLease all know your facts before posting... Kerostasis this is not meant to start a flame war. It does not matter if she was in the parking lot, which she wasn't. She did enter the terminal, actually about 50 feet inside of it. As I stated people were fleeing the terminal due to what she had on her! The similarities between the theater and any other place are in fact valid, in my opinion. She still caused havok...just because she has freedom of expression does not mean that right is granted in all areas, thankfully it is not.

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sordavie

She's probably like my ex-housemate: highly intelligent but lacking common sense and clueless when it comes to ordinary things. She probably didn't realize that such a thing would cause a security alert. I'm inclined to think this isn't about freedom of expression or anything like that. More likely, she thought hey it's a harmless piece of art, not realizing, as most people with a bit of common sense would, that it could look highly suspicious at the airport where security is tight. It may sound weird to us, but that's just because we have common sense. Imagine how someone might appear in public if he or she had no common sense. Imagine what kinds of faux passes they might make unintentionally. For whatever reason, there are people who's brains work very well at an abstract, theoretical level but terribly when it comes to practical, everyday stuff.

My ex-housemate would do things that anyone with a little bit of common sense would not do and vice versa. For instance, we went to the same grocery store once a week. But, for whatever reason, he just could not remember where anything was. And, instead of just walking around the store and grabbing whatever he needed like normal people, he had to ask me to bring him to each item he wanted. And, if we went past another item on his list while moving to get the item at hand, he wouldn't pick it up. We'd have to come back to get it. Someone with common sense would say, "hey let me pick that up now to save some time."

He also had no concept of the private/public distinction when it came to stuff you tell him. For instance, if someone says something and it's understood that this conversation is meant stay in the room he would invariably go around telling everyone the next day. He would also ask random inappropriate questions about people's private lives (not just the other grad students but including professors and secretaries). And his curiosity was genuine here. He just didn't realize that some things are such that people want to keep them private, and he would be flustered when others didn't answer him because of this.

He also got it in to his head one day that if we didn't shovel the sidewalk by 7am we would get fined by the city. So, one Sunday morning after it had snowed, he woke me up at 6am and told me that we had to shovel snow. I tried to explain to him why we wouldn't get fined, but he just couldn't understand. So, I went outside to shovel snow. Ten minutes later, I found that I couldn't get back in the house. He had locked the door and went back to sleep completely not realizing that we were supposed to be shoveling snow and that I was outside doing it. There wasn't any ill intent. He just didn't realize.

He completely freaked out a girl he was interested in after she sent him some socks. Apparently he took the gesture as a sign that they were in a serious relationship. In reality, she knew that he didn't have much common sense and probably could use some warm socks for the NY winters.He also called 911 when he found a bat flying around the living room. He took all of his clothes to a dry cleaner (shelling out who knows how much) to get his clothes washed and dried because I wasn't around that day to remind him how to use the washer and dryer. He was particularly bad with anything mechanical. But, even worse is a professor I have, who somehow thought that he had locked himself in his office (it's just a regular door knob with a twisting lock) and jumped out the second story window (breaking his leg) with his suitcase and all to go home, instead of using the phone to call for help.

Anyhow, I had to move out because he was so much of an inconvenience to live with. Usually his actions caused other people inconvenience and sometimes they caused others grief. But, I don't think that he ever did any of them with ill intent. It was rather a lack of common sense that blocked his ability to be considerate of his surroundings and the people in them.

To see how extreme this could be consider that the girl apparently walked away without responding to the representative at the customer service desk who asked about the board attached to her shirt. We think that that's highly suspicious behavior. Anyone with common sense understands that when someone asks a (non-rhetorical) question, an answer or response is expected. Someone without common sense might not realize this (or might not realize that a non-rhetorical rather than rhetorical question was asked). I suppose it's really hard for us to see how someone, who's at a prestigious university, could be like this, but there are.

So, I don't think there was any wrong doing on any side here with the MIT girl. The authorities acted as they should have. The girl had no ill intent. I don't think she was trying to express her freedom of speech or perform some kind of art or anything like that. I work with lots of these kinds of people and they can do some pretty silly things unintentionally. It's just a matter of lack of common sense.

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marstein

I agree with you. But if you think about it how many of those batteries and circuit boards EVERYONE is taking with into the planes? And those laptop batteries pack a punch of power.

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JMJ

Misunderstanding? Are you serious?

Steeler

Why do people in this forum get so angry at my raising the POSSIBILITY that this was a misunderstanding?

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AMosely

Steeler is correct, and there is really nothing to rationally debate beyond this statement. As much as we sometimes all wish that being foolishly isolated from real world circumstances and context was a crime, it is not. Airports are hypersensitive places and will be for some time to come. Either the woman intended to cause a scare or was simply being very foolish. This is up to law enforcement to figure out and hopefully settle judiciously.

Perhaps in the future the information desks can relay people like this to the clueless bureau for pre-screening before being handed over to law enforcement.

CingularDuality

I think it's important to realize that police all across our country are being trained to shoot suspected suicide bombers in the head without hesitation. Considering this training, I'm surprised and glad that this situation turned out the way it did. I really don't think this girl realized just how close she really was to being killed, and just how important her actions became when she was approached by law enforcement.

Regardless of whether or not it's a misunderstanding, it was dumb and deadly. There have been situations where toy guns were stupidly pointed at cops and the cops have killed the person holding the gun. I'm sure some of those were misunderstandings and not malicious pranks, but it doesn't change the way the cops MUST react, nor will it bring anyone back to life after a cop righteously uses deadly force.

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leejo

Apparently we're all irrational and you are the arbiter of that which is right and logical and that which is wrong and illogical?

Cing and JMJ are, I know, professionals. I trust you will understand if I think they know a bit more about what is rational and correct in this situation, and judge your position illogical and dangerously arrogant. While it is always convenient to shut down opposing views by calling them names, I think you would benefit by stepping outside your own head for a moment and imagine how it must look for a member of academia to debate what to do with a potential suicide bomber with several members of law enforcement and declare their positions invalid. Ask yourself who in their right mind would trust their lives and freedom to a person who assumes that he knows more about a subject matter than a trained professional and so easily declares their positions incorrect and irrational.

Perhaps such a person might take similar positions on subjects about which they know very little that affect national security, tax policy, global warming, etc.

I certainly appreciate working with experts and challenging their positions, but the fact is that experience teaches that one ignores their advice at great peril.

Steeler

I think I should clarify that I think the police responded appropriately and quickly to the report of a person in the airport with a suspicious device. What I'm looking critically at is the observational skills of the teller (and we really can't judge the character of that interpersonal exchange without actually witnessing it - for all we know the student was deliberately acting odd and the teller acted exactly according to procedure) and the legal response to the incident after the fact. It is my firm belief that the responsible use of prosecutorial and judicial discretion should seek to appropriately punish intentional misconduct and deal compassionately with simple misunderstandings.

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Atomic Dog

@Cing

I think the question that comes to mind for me, in regards to "suicide bomber training" is...how are these officers being trained to identify these people?

/@Cing

Admittedly, it was pretty foolish of her...but also, I think it's a bit scary to think that in the U.S. we're resorting to this "Shoot First" mentality. It rings scarily of a police-state mentality.

Growing up in Los Angeles, you heard from time to time about someone getting shot by a cop because they were holding a toy gun. Most often these were children. Sometimes very small children. It always seemed absurd to me that any officer could confuse a small child with a toy gun for a dangerous criminal.

Certainly this isn't the case with this student, but if she had been shot...it would have resulted in huge public outcry I predict.

It seems like we're trying to bring the "IED" mentality of the middle-east to our country where we don't have road-side bombs going off every day, or suicide bombers running into markets, or insurgents shooting up every neighborhood over religious and political differences. That just doesn't happen here at this time.

I'm not sure the actions of the officers were an overreaction, but certainly the mentality ("Shoot first, questions later") was...this IS America after all.

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AMosely

This is all true, but it's important to remember that law enforcement is there to protect the public from everything - including themselves. It's an incredibly difficult job to do well, and requires specific practice and training.

This thead got me thinking - it's extremely unfortunate to think that if America suffers another terrorist attack soon, we may end up in a similar security state to Israel's, where members of the army (in the U.S. this would probably be National Guard) do uniformed patrols in vulnerable public places as a regular part of their service. I remember after 9/11 when the National Guard was deployed at US airports, and how much that freaked me out. They weren't trained at all for that job, and I remember wondering if it was more dangerous to have them there than it was not to. In Israel, the constant military presence is done in an effort to provide faster response to attacks and make the public feel safer, but it's also interesting to see the effect it has on both public and police/military behavior. I was living in Israel for a period and I had several soldiers tell me that you get used to it as you would anything else. They claimed that the training is very rigorous on recognizing true threats, but also recognizing non-threats that may meet some of the criteria of a true one. America is in its infancy when it comes to dealing with things like this. Israel has been living with it for decades, and it has enabled both the military/police and the public to better put things in context - like an LED board on a kid's sweatshirt. I think if this MIT woman had walked into Ben Gurion, it would have been handled very differently - perhaps more appropriately. America's hypersensitivity to perceived threats could use refinement, but that is all the more reason for both law enforcement and the public to be more aware.

Atomic Dog

The difference between Israel and the United States is, however, that one is surrounded on all side by hostile countries. The other is not. Israel has done a fantastic job in training their military to deal with the reality of their situation. On the other hand, to me it seems that the U.S. is not. Instead there is a sense of false-reality steeped in fear that appears to be consuming our nation.

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SmokingTarpan

Which I think is rather silly.

Personally, I think security acted appropriately in detaining the girl. I don't think, however, she should be prosecuted/fined/punished unless it can be proven that she had the intent of causing panic.

I don't have a problem with law enforcement acting in a way they see fit when encountering suspicious devices/people. They're doing it for our safety, I appreciate it. What annoys me is when the security/officers/officials become indignant and cling rabidly to their decree of punishment if they've been proven wrong. Defending their response actions is quite fine- punishing people for stupidity/misunderstanding isn't so fine.

One other thing. Many people seem to making the argument of, "there's no official look for a bomb." I agree, anything can be a bomb these days. My question to you: Why was this chick detained and not the dude next to her with the cell phone? The woman with a laptop? Kid with the shoes that light up when he walks? Man in a hoodie with a backpack?

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