In this case everyone involved in suspending him should have been seriously reprimanded and an apology given (and I'm surprised one wasn't). But a $15 million lawsuit isn't the answer.
> Punitive damages or exemplary damages are damages intended to reform or deter the defendant and others from engaging in conduct similar to that which formed the basis of the lawsuit. Although the purpose of punitive damages is not to compensate the plaintiff, the plaintiff will receive all or some portion of the punitive damage award.
Schools have procedures for when there's a suspected bomb. They don't look like what was done, here. There was never a suspected bomb - only a suspected hoax.
Anyways, if we're going with hearsay then we should mention the boy's sister was suspended for making a bomb threat so I'd doubt the average teacher would just brush this off as "definitely not a bomb".
Now, seems like in your mind it would've been better for the school to send a SWAT team after him. I'm sure that wouldn't be seen as a negative thing by anyone.
Far more conspicuous than relative lack of force (which, depending on particulars, might possibly have been a fine reaction to an actual bomb) is the apparent lack of any move to evacuate other students.
> He said he took it to school on Monday to show an engineering teacher, who said it was nice but then told him he should not show the invention to other teachers. Later, Ahmed’s clock beeped during an English class, and after he revealed the device to the teacher, school officials notified the police, and Ahmed was interrogated by officers.
> Ahmed wasn’t accused of making a bomb – he was accused of making a look-alike, a hoax. And be honest with yourself, a big red digital display with a bunch of loose wires in a brief-case looking box is awful like a Hollywood-style representation of a bomb. [1]
[1]: http://blogs.artvoice.com/techvoice/2015/09/17/reverse-engin...
Losing 15 million dollars is not a loss most school districts will be able to withstand - that would likely mean the closing of schools, consolidation, larger class sizes, teacher pay decreases, etc.
But yeah, costing a community of people 15 million dollars sure will teach the four or five people actually involved a valuable lesson.
But seriously, isn't this how it always has been with incidents like this? If they want to sue they don't want to sue for $2 million because the school will probably tryo to settle for ~$500K. If you set it at $15 million, it anchors the price point higher and they may get $3 million to make it go away.
But it wasn't a hoax dude. It actually happened. He got arrested for pretty much _no_ reason whatsoever.
There are two separate events
1. Ahmed was arrested for a pretty dumb thing and most likely because he was a brown kid it made it easier for them to assume it was a bomb or hoax bomb. Whatever they want to call it. I'd have to see how often "hoax bombs" were actually used to arrest someone before I say they racially profiled him for sure, but my gut feeling is that there isn't a high incidence of hoax bomb arrests.
2. Ahmed's family is suing for $15 million. Not Ahmed, who probably has little choice in the matter.
I am sure suing for so much money has brought bad publicity for them, but at the same time that issue is separate from the incident of him being arrested, which happened.
Using the term rent-seeking is a bit over the top unless you really believe this entire thing was staged.
The whole "homemade clock" claim is what was a hoax, regardless of any subsequent panic about its application. (If you aren't clear on the backstory, look it up. It's just a mass-production A/C-powered clock taken out of its case. For example, see: http://www.ebay.com/itm/MICRONTA-Large-Red-Display-Digital-A...)
Regarding the reaction: hindsight is a handy thing, but we live in an era where schools routinely go into complete lockdown if some kid or staffer thinks he might have spotted a weapon.
When you read the article carefully, some things pop out:
1) BBC makes no mention here of the whole "homebuilt" concept itself being a hoax, e.g. a "homemade" clock (why the suitcase?) that was really just a disassembled, mass-production A/C-powered clock).
2) Lawyer letter stating, "Irving Police officials immediately determined that the clock was harmless" is false. Beat cops aren't qualified to make any such analysis; even things as innocuous as an unattended backpack get further analysis by specifically trained personnel.
3) "Ahmed's father ... once stood as a presidential candidate against (Sudanese President) Bashir." That's a pretty strong theoretical motive for a publicity stunt.
In any case, they leveraged the fauxtrage into a full scholarship to The Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community... so, mission accomplished.
Another article, however, claims the following: "(Teacher) did escort Ahmed to the office, where the letter alleges that five police officers, the principal and the assistant principal performed an "interrogation." During that time, he was allegedly not permitted to contact his parents and was forced to sign a letter of confession under the threat of expulsion." Now, if that is true, that warrants investigation and corrective action on its own, completely unrelated to religion, national origin, or who "made" the item, or why.
Meanwhile, this article says that his older sister claims to have been suspended 5-6 years earlier over alleged threats to blow up her school:
'The sister claimed after the arrest that she had been suspended from a school for several days. “I got suspended from school for three days from this stupid same district, from this girl saying I wanted to blow up the school, something I had nothing to do with,” she said, without providing evidence or proof.
The episode occurred around 2009, she said. The scare happened in “my first year of attempting middle school in America. I knew English, but the culture was different, the people were different,” Eyman said.
“I got suspended and I didn’t do anything about it,” she said.'
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/23/ahmeds-si...
If true, that's an interesting pattern.
If you combine those facts to believe Ahmed's father completely set this up, then you can also just combine these facts to determine that people in that school district of Texas are probably just racists (the sister didn't do anything and got suspended, the brother did something that may have been grounds for suspension, but got arrested). People are willing to crucify Ahmed (who again I doubt had much choice if he was set up to do this) for the former, but no one cares about the possibility of the latter. I'm guessing the truth lies between these two extremes.
But again, if Ahmed's father set him up for this, then there should have been an investigation. And if he had been found guilty of forcing his son to stage some fake clock/bomb thing, well I'll go and sharpen my pitchfork for it. But as far as I can tell, kid was _arrested_ for what amounts to a clock he didn't make.
> 2) Lawyer letter stating, "Irving Police officials immediately determined that the clock was harmless" is false. Beat cops aren't qualified to make any such analysis; even things as innocuous as an unattended backpack get further analysis by specifically trained personnel.
If they did think it was a bomb, or didn't think it was but had no authority/knowledge to assess that it was a bomb, then it is even worse because it means there was a possible bomb on campus and they failed to evacuate the school. I think that was part of the anger that people felt about this case. Were they really thinking about the welfare of the rest of the children on campus or did they know it wasn't a bomb so were just kinda harassing Ahmed because they wanted to?
I'm currently inclining to believe that, but that's beside the point. The whole nation stood in their defense, they got so high up the chain that even POTUS got interested personally, and now they're suing for $15 million?! Rent-seeking is a little light word for that IMO.
I think there should be some kinda of punitive damage for the school because of their actions. I don't think it's $15 million. I also don't think a jury will award $15 million. And more likely the case may be thrown out or the school district will just settle to make it go away.
People in this thread are acting as though they were already awarded $15 million. I always assumed a jury ends up deciding the damages, if any, in civil cases like this. It's not an automatic $15 million if they prove their case just because that's what they asked for in compensation.
I don't think so. Personally, if they got awarded $15 million, I would be pissed off at the jury. I'm angry at the kid's family for having the chutzpah to ask for that much money.
I'm sorry, in what way is this frivolous?
A school district that serves thousands of children, primarily minorities.
I am shocked that there is anyone saying that those children deserve poorer educational outcomes because of this incident.