Comments on: Aqua Teen Hunger Farce, pt. 2

By: johnnymadass

johnnymadass — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 18:18:27 +0000

The real shock for me is the news/police referring to it as a “fake bomb” and then putting piece of art in quotes. This is bad just bad journalism at best, Hegemony at worst.

By: Biggs Johnson

Biggs Johnson — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 02:20:10 +0000

She’s slightly foreign looking. Probably a good enough reason to shoot her about five hundred times. In the back. With a machinegun.

By: June

June — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 20:05:59 +0000

Your kid won’t be arrested unless someone freaks out. But if someone does freak out, they’ll blame anyone but themselves.

By: jacoky

jacoky — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 19:33:27 +0000

Is this another Boston-only over-reaction? The police should stop calling it a “fake bomb” or hoax and acting like they just stopped a terriorist attack. Her sweatshirt art looks like one of my kid’s K’Nex projects. Is my kid going to arrested if he brings a battery operated K’Nex toy to Boston?

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 18:56:47 +0000

The state law on hoax devices also requires relevant intent on the part of the accused. If she didn’t have any criminal intent (because, for example, she thought of the light-up shirt as a clearly harmless art project), then she didn’t break the law. If you ignore the person’s intent, then whether we’re breaking the law is up to the most paranoid among us, because ANYTHING could look like a bomb.

Not that the details of the law matter, since the ramifications of a felony arrest are serious and permanent even if the charges are later dismissed.

By: adamg

adamg — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 18:18:15 +0000

I agree with you, but unfortunately for us, the state legislature was apparently thinking of just such a case, because the state law on hoax devices defines a hoax device as “any device that would cause a person reasonably to believe that such device is an infernal machine.” It makes a similar definition for a “hoax substance.”

In other words, if a state trooper thinks your geeky, quirky little welcome-home present made of blinking lights and Play Doh looks reasonably like a “hoax device” coated in a “hoax substance,” then you can be hauled away.