Letters to the Editor
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Open Letter to Boston Mayor Tom Menino
Mayor Menino:
I realize you are not, of course, directly responsible for the actions of airport security this morning in the arrest of Star Simpson, an MIT sophomore electrical engineering student who was wearing a sweat shirt that had LED's on it. Honestly it is unclear to me from the histronic news articles I have read what law enforcement agency was responsible for this arrest. CNN quotes a member of the State Police, so I do not know if Boston Police were involved.
However, coming on the heels of the insanity surrounding the Aqua Teen Hunger Force promotional stunt, I note a disturbing trend. I have seen pictures of the sweatshirt this poor girl was wearing. it looks nothing like a bomb. It has a circut board sewn to it with LEDs in the shape of a star. Presumably, because that's her name and she's an electrical engineer and thought it was cute. It is outrageous she was arrested at gunpoint by police prepared to use deadly force for wearing a shirt with blinky lights.
You may respond with such platitudes as you did in the wake of the Mooninite scare about 9/11 or whatever. The fact is, a dark skinned girl was wearing blinky lights, and was treated as a terrorist.
All that aside, my real question to you is: Do Boston Police have any idea what an actual, real world, not in a James Bond movie bomb looks like? They seem to be under the impression that all bombs have LEDs on them, and furthermore, all things with LEDs must be bombs. Perhaps you would pass a memo along to the Chief of Police that bombs don't actually require bliking lights? And that any real explosive device that people were trying to smuggle into an airport definintely would not be lit up in plain veiw? I get the disturbing sense that a man could walk into logan with an armload of pipe bombs and not be hassled as long as none of them looked suspiciously blinky. But heaven forbid a six year old in those light-up sneakers tried to run through a security gate.