The "kid who made the clock," arrested unjustly: Do you think 15 million is justified?

No, but it won’t bother me too much if they have to pay. Knee jerk reactions about stuff like this should have hefty consequences so people actually start to use their head a little

He immigrated to Qatar where “The Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community offered him a full scholarship in October. His family announced they would be leaving Texas and moving so he could attend school there.”
Is father was once a candidate for the presidency of Sudan.

Mark my words, Donald Trump will make hay with it regarding the Muslim immigration issue.

When you have a frontrunner in the presidential election being open to the idea of closing down Mosques and a database of Muslims then yeah, maybe you need to start slapping some hands really hard.

I would also argue that the girl that got piledrived by the cop-thing at that school a few months ago should get 100 million since what happened to her was significantly worse.

I guess the only way to stop this stupid shit is to make it very expensive to do it.

$15 million is high. $0 is low.

There should be some consequences to the school district as a result of their assheadedness.

Expensive for who, @johnpowell?
The taxpayers?
Just makes the haters hate worse.

Better not get me on the jury, he will get squat.

The lawyers start at $15 million to set the bar very high and make a media splash. Now that the media is thoroughly involved, there will likely be a bit of back-and-forth, then a settlement for a few million.
$15 million was never meant to be a serious request.

No. It should be more.
The colonies should bleed (financially) for their institutional racism.

I think he should have filed for a nice round $25 Million. Or, the pension funds of the High School District, the Police Department, and the City Government.

NO one in that town stood up for the kid.

Those that balk at that number are ignorant of how lawsuits work and thus cannot be taken seriously. I would also suggest that they never attempt to haggle or negotiate as they are ill-equipped to to so.

How many such suits do you hear about where the plaintiff actually gets the full amount they are seeking? Many of them don’t even get to trial, many that do don’t get to a ruling due to settlement, and suits like this are more about principle than money, so it he gets even a single penny, he wins simply because the town and school are proven guilty.

@rojo People like you are why this lawsuit even came about in the first place. It’s also why the US has a bad rep in the world community.

@jerv No, I don’t think so. If we discount the fact that what he did was a rather stupid and the result of being young and just not thinking things through and we accept that those in authority overreacted to the situation then we can say that there are specific individuals who are responsible and that this includes the student himself.

What the lawyers have done is take a shotgun approach to this shooting a scatter gun with the hopes of bagging a target that would rather pay out the money than litigate.

Why should the entire school district be forced to pay for the acts of a few individuals and for that matter why even the entire school. Yet you would allow them to jump even further beyond that hold an entire town responsible? No, If they want to go after those ACTUALLY responsible, then I am all for it but don’t try to tar the entire town with the same brush.

By your reckoning if he gets a single penny then the school and town are proven guilty. Using that faulty logic you could expand that even further and say that the entire county is guilt yand that means the entire state is also and that means the entire country is actually to blame? Where would you like to draw the line?

I respectfully put it to you that it is people like you that have brought about the present situation where by allowing such broad ranging lawsuits to even make it to court that we have reached the point where we are now where any one can sue any group for anything with very good chances of winning an out-of court settlement that allows those who are actually guilty to get away with paying little to no actual damages while punishing a broader range of society.

The clock that he never made.

The boy is clever—but not in the way people think. The only thing he made was a well-crafted controversy from which he and his parents could profit very handsomely. He knew the reaction he would get, and he’s exploited it masterfully.

I guess he and his parents moved to the right country for this sort of thing.

@rojo The entire school is at fault,as well as the Police Department. No one spoke up for the kid.

And you have a lot of damn gall to call him “stupid.” What the hell is stupid about a kid being curious enough to put together a digital clock, even if it was just a kit? We’re all supposed to walk around fearful of a non existent threat of child terrorists?

To partially quote you, … I respectfully put it to you that it is people like you that have brought about the present situation where by… children get shot for playing in a park with an airlift gun, kids get threatened with expulsion for telling a girl he likes her, and a kid pointing his finger like gun is considered a terroristic threat.

@rojo The fact that you are complaining about lawsuits is funny. What other possible redress of grievances is possible considering that it was not a single person, but rather an administrative entity that was wrong? Throw the entire school system in jail? Give the county some time in prison?

Or are you saying that racism is entirely justified insofar as any grievances are to be handled my “Might makes right!”?

Either way, you miss the point. I’m pretty sure that if a full investigation took place to exonerate the innocent, a few people lost their jobs, and new policies were put in place to prevent it from reoccurring, that $15m figure would drop pretty fast. It’s a thing called “negotiation”, also known as “bargaining”.

I respectfully put it to you that allowing lawsuits is a better alternative than the old way of handling things; either feudalism with all the exploitation that implies, or uprising which, historically speaking, rarely ends well. And it would appear by the continued poor treatment of non-whites here that our society as a whole has not yet advanced to the point where we no longer need to be a little heavy-handed in order to enforce order.

Consider it the price one pays for being unrepentant. I mean, if a third-time robber deserves a stiffer sentence for the same crime than a first-offender, then how severely do you punish someone who has thousands of offenses? Wouldn’t just a few dozen be enough for you to start being a little less lenient?

But if you would rather these sort of things were either handled by rioting mobs or quelled by a police state, that’s your right. Just know that anyone who cares about freedom, justice, or the nation our founding fathers envisioned will oppose you.

@Kropotkin Source? So far, the only things I’ve seen that support that are places that have pictures of Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate and Hillary Clinton on the grassy knoll back in ‘63. There is also some dispute over whether he was a CIA plant or whether it was the Knights Templar or Rosicrucians, but my money is on the Bavarian Illuminati.

@zenvelo please go back and re-read what I actually wrote. I did not call the boy stupid. I said what he did was stupid. There is a difference.
Also, I wonder why you stop with just the entire school district and the entire police department being guilty. Why not take it all the way up and fault the entire nation, which, I assume, would also include yourself.
As for your extension of the argument to other issues. We can take this up another day.

And I will be happy to discuss what makes up a terroristic threat. My son was accused of making such a threat but I didn’t blame the entire fucking system. I blame the teacher who set him up and the lawyer who manipulated the system and challenged it at that level.

@jerv, I am not ignoring you, I will get back to you but I have something requiring my attention at this time.

@rojo You seem to really have a hair across your ass about how far up it will go. Are you looking to pin this on Obama and try in vain to get him impeached, or are you merely being facetious?

The school district is responsible for the conduct of it’s employees, including the teachers. The city is directly responsible for the conduct of it’s local police force. The lawsuit goes as high as the accountability does; it stops at the City of Irving and Irving Independent School District. The Texas government has delegated that responsibility to them, and thus earned a degree of deniability. After all, if the Texas board of education were at fault, this sort of stuff would happen in all Texas schools; the fact that it doesn’t implies that the fault lies at a lower level of administration…. like the Irving Independent School District.

Likewise, who were the ones that cuffed him and roughed him? FBI? Texas Rangers? Nope. It was local yokels; the townies. That leaves the county, state, and federal police forces unaccountable as none of those are directly responsible for the conduct of Irving’s local cops.

BTW, did your son get accused simply because of the color of his skin or the “foreignness” of his name? I’d wager that your kid got accused because he actually did something. That right there makes a shitload of difference! If you think it doesn’t, then that implies that you are perfectly fine with police pulling people over for a DWB, and I’m just not cool with that.

@jerv I wasn’t going to reply at all, but…

What in the name of Zeus are you blathering about?

@Kropotkin That was my way of asking you the same thing. I mean, seriously, where did you get that conspiracy theory from? Or did your post just come out wrong?

@jerv let us take this one item at a time. First off, i am not complaining about the lawsuits. I stated that if you get me on a jury for one of your spurious lawsuits you will get squat. That is not complaining but stating a position. Second, using the courts as a ploy to extort monetary gains from someone or something is a problem, not a solution. Third, you are assuming racism without proof; stupidity is not confined to a particular race, religion or creed and your crying wolf does not prove that it is so. Fourth, you see them as using the court system as a viable means of negotiating a monetary settlement, I see it as a form of extortion; different viewpoints Fifth, I am not sure how your statement ”Consider it the price one pays for being unrepentant. I mean, if a third-time robber deserves a stiffer sentence for the same crime than a first-offender, then how severely do you punish someone who has thousands of offenses? Wouldn’t just a few dozen be enough for you to start being a little less lenient?” negates the fact that you are choosing to allow the punishment of those who are innocent along with those you perceive as guilty. You are tarring the entire school district and police department with the same brush. And, as I said earlier, if you are going to do that, why stop there? Why not expand it to cover the entire nation. Why draw the imaginary line there? If you have a problem then pinpoint the source of your aggravation and focus in on that. Quit using the shotgun approach with the hope that something will find its mark and damned those who are caught in the crossfire. Sixth, as to who is responsible; this is exactly my argument. I say sue those responsible yet you express the opinion that every local, every townie, in your words, is guilty. Seriously? You think that every cop and every person in the school district and every citizen whose tax dollars pays for these services actually abused the kid? Get real. There are specific individuals. I have no problem going after them. I object to you deciding that everyone is responsible but only up to a point. If you are going to claim everyone is responsible then go after everyone not just the locals. I am asking why you draw the line at this point? We are both drawing arbitrary lines. Mine are just a little more specific than yours so get off your high horse.

As for the hair on my ass, perhaps we can get together and you can intertwine them with your nose hairs to help hold you in place while you lick my butthole and, perhaps, find out how far up those hairs go.

@rojo First off, you probably wouldn’t make the jury anyways; the reason is obvious.

Second, I’ve seen more evidence pointing to redress of grievances than extortion. But whenyou said, “using the courts as a ploy to extort monetary gains from someone or something is a problem, not a solution”, you contradicted your first point by complaining about the lawsuits. Your entire second post in this thread did too. Your credibility takes a hit when you lie like that. And more lies means more hits, so you’re already hard to take seriously.

Third, it’s funny that you mention crying wolf as the moral of that story is really that once you establish a pattern of behavior, people expect that behavior.

Fourth, I’m not the type that sees anything the government is even remotely associated with as “extortion”, but you’re entitled to disagree if you so desire. C’est la vie.

Fifth is kind of special as there is a long pattern of behavior involving numerous individuals, that wouldn’t work; those organizations would still be flawed. If it were individuals, this would’ve been handled by going after individuals. If the school board and police department took the people you see as the only valid targets of a lawsuit and threw them under the bus, this lawsuit never would’ve happened. You’ve proven repeatedly that you are utterly incapable of grasping that concept though, so I won’t bother typing slowly to try explaining it to you.

Sixth, when a bank is robbed, the getaway driver is also committing a crime even if he never set foot in the bank, and here you are saying that those who aid and/or abet criminals are 10,000% innocent of any and all wrongdoing. In fact, your desire to allow this sort of thing to go without some sort of deterrent like this lawsuit tells me that you don’t even see things like this as more than minorly wrong (if that), thus making you part of the problem.

We are drawing different lines. I’m drawing mine where culpability lies while you’re drawing yours somewhere that preserves the status quo and allows for this sort of thing to continue. You are the getaway driver. Re-read the previous two paragraphs until you understand. You don’t have to agree, but you’ve given every impression that you don’t even know that you’re disagreeing with someone who has the same opinion.

With that, I will say that the only reason I even responded to your post, especially considering the manner in which you ended it, is insomnia and a lack of better things to do at 2AM. But you bored me to sleep with your ignorance, so I will thank you for that small favor as I leave this thread behind.