Aqua Teen Art 'Terrorist' Describes His Ordeal

destinyland writes "Boston police arrested artist 'Zebbler' for installing L.E.D. devices that promoted Aqua Teen Hunger Force (after police mistook them for bombs). He's finally shared the real behind-the-scenes story about his arrest and release. He describes his interrogation ('My interrogator gave me nothing but carrots to eat') and remembers a surreal exchange with a police officer. ('My daughter is a huge fan of you ... So, did you really mean to blow up Boston?') Now his latest project is a cool high-definition/surround sound installation for an event called RIP.MIX.BURN.BAM.PFA."

A story worthy of Franz Kafka.

[Z00L00K]

It is so bizarre and still indicates the rigidness of the public service to go so over the edge that it can only be fully described as a work of surrealistic art.

I'm torn.

[Guppy06]

On the one hand, the police went overboard. On the other, I'm not going to shed a tear for an advertiser.

Re:What are the police really like?

[QuantumG]

hehe, the recordings are for use against you. If the recording records a police officer beating you or insulting your heritage such that you consider beating on him, that tape will just disappear. If the police ask you where you were at the time of the murder and you tell them a perfect alibi that tape will disappear and when you get to court they will say "if he had an alibi, why didn't he tell us during interrogation?" and imply that you got someone to lie for you.

Re:Hmm...

[FredFredrickson]

Just because it alarmed the public, didn't mean he knew it'd happen. I think intent should have a lot to do with things. Anyway, people are just retarded. I was in Boston that day. I wish I had seen it!

If it's not an American flag...

[mikesum]

it must be a bomb.

Re:seriously?

[aussie_a]

Because a bomb squad, who should have handled the dismantling of these devices, should have known in 5 minutes it wasn't a fucking bomb. Now either: 1) they weren't called in so the police are incompetent. 2) they were called in and ignored so the police are incompetent. 3) they were called in and thought it was a bomb so they were incompetent. In any event, someone was incompetent in reacting to these LED sticky thingies. It certainly wasn't the PR company.

Conspicuous Hustle

[dharmadove]

Maybe they made such a big deal about it to get more Government funding? Lot'$ of taxpayer buck$ out there in the Homeland $ecurity biz.

Conspicuous Hustle - A trick one of my former Chief Engineers used to make it look like he was doing something when the so called problem / issue was a no brainer. He'd make it look like a big deal, set up a "Tiger Team", expended lots of resources, got more budget, manpower, lots of visability, etc. and became the "Hero that saved the project". This was when I worked for a military contracting company in the late '80s. The Chief Engineer was later put on "Special Projects" and fired. He had lied to the customer (USAF) during a critical design review and exposed. I'll never forget when his "Dog Robber" was helping him pack up to leave.

Made my day...

Uncle Sam wants you!

[alienmole]

With your incredible mental acuity, you have a promising career ahead of you in the Boston Police Department, or perhaps the Department of Homeland Security.

Re:I'm torn.

[alienmole]

Are you serious? He's an artist and a VJ who was doing an advertising gig. Assuming you actually work for a living, what kind of morally superior day job do *you* have?

Re:I'll wade into the lion's mouth

[meringuoid]

A trailer where you seemed to be selling coffee or ice cream wouldn't attract the attention of the police unless they wanted to check your permits but they wouldn't do that until you opened for business. Hiding a bomb in a display that is designed to draw attention does make sense. If they ignored them and they did blow up then people would be screaming.

So, if I were to go into business with a fleet of ice cream vans, and one fine summer's day my vans are driving around Boston giving away promotional ice cream and drawing quite a crowd, you would say the police ought to close down the roads, bring the whole city to a standstill, and arrest me on charges of perpetrating a bomb hoax, because my vans might be bombs?

dark age

[wikinerd]

If you get into a time machine and get back to the dark ages and you put an image of a dragon in the middle of a mediaeval city you can laugh as you watch the crowd getting crazy and paranoid... until they catch and burn you as a witch (and if you don't look like one, they will make you look like a witch, probably by comparing your weight with that of a duck).

Now, fast forward to 2007. Modern enlightened age you think? Think again... If you install some electronic stuff in a modern US city, you can laugh as you watch the crowd getting crazy and paranoid... until they catch you. What happens next depends very much on how white your skin is, whether you have a beard, and whether your name sounds Muslim. An English name combined with white skin and no facial hair will result in you getting your freedom after some interrogation in a police station, but if you have the "wrong" demographic characteristics then you will end up in a nasty camp in Cuba (By the way I find it interesting how they chose to set up Guantanamo on the same island as a communist dictatorship).

The same can happen if you get into an airport with an electronic nametag on your chest.

Or, perhaps if you walk to enter a train with your iPod wires visible from your pocket.

Welcome to a society where everything that deviates from what is considered normal is equated with terrorism. Very soon every kind of behaviour, from what you see on your computer screen (Treacherous Computing will help with this) to what clothes you wear will be controlled by formal bureaucracies by force of violence if you don't comply. Not really because your behaviour will constitute a real threat, but only because your behaviour is inconsistent with that of a slave.

When (or if) this terrorism fear paranoia passes, future historians will discuss our post-911 age with great interest and will consider it as a prime example of how civilisations can sabotage themselves and self-destruct forgetting hundreds of years of societal and civil evolution.

Wrong sort of attention.

[Xenographic]

You've failed to distinguish between attracting attention and attracting attention to something that looks like a bomb.

The former is a perfectly evil way to draw a crowd which does not anticipate danger and hurt them. The latter is a really, really stupid tactic. Even if, for some reason, they were convinced that it would work as a means of reverse psychology, it obviously doesn't. I should also mention that the size and placement of the "devices" guaranteed that they would be useless as weapons. They were far too small to make a dent in the bridges and such they were placed on and they were to high up to be any kind of anti-personnel weapon.

The terrorists may be stupid in their own way, but alas they usually do manage to blow people up when they try to. You don't accomplish that with poor tactics and badly placed bombs. Given how prone people are to panicking these days, I'm just glad the terrorists are apparently too stupid to know how to use that to hurt lots of people. I'm sure as hell not going to tell them.

Re:What are the police really like?

[Nephilium]

The answer? The local baseball team had won the baseball championship. The police response was against fans, celebrating the victory in the streets. The Boston response to people celebrating a sporting victory is to call out the riot police. According to the reporter, the last time something like this happened, the Boston police actually killed a fan, using a "less than lethal" weapon that proved not to live up to its name.

You mean to prevent stuff like the riots in Detroit when the Pistons won the championship? Or the flaming mattresses in Columbus when OSU won?

Nephilium

And Somewhere John Adams is weeping for Boston

[gadlaw]

Educational standards and common sense standards for police and elected officials in Boston certainly have fallen since Revolutionary War times when John Adams and others in Massachusetts led the way for Independence and for the rights of man in society. Now Boston is known for ignorance, thuggery, incompetence and a place willing to take the rights of humans away for the false security afforded by uniformed idiots with their self presented jangling medals and uniform bling while they all whore their way in front of cameras at the least provocation to strut and self congratulate each other about how well they are doing. Boston is a joke and an embarrassment. That's my two cents.

Re:Hmm...

[mshomphe]

The goal of terrorism is to effect change in a society through fear. Every time you and your fraidy-cat buddies jumps because something reminds you of a crappy episode of 24 you give legitimacy to those tactics. Not only that, you encourage the subversion of the necessary civil liberties inherent to the United States by government forces. Instead of plotzing every time we see some unfamiliar blinkenlightz, we should be thinking about root causes. All the security in the world is not worth the price of my freedom. I'm surprised you don't feel the same way.

Problems.

[Erris]

I can understand caution but not mean spirited incompetence. It should have been apparent from the devices size and placement that they were not a real threat. I can understand caution and further tests to make sure because we should not assume terrorists are competent. What I can't understand is bile like yours and vilification of the artists. They were not terrorists and should not be treated that way. "Terror suspect" is just another phrase for "you have no rights" and that is a larger issue than toys on subways. Paranoid people like you will mistake any new object as a "fake bomb" and you will treat the person who put it there, or some scape goat, as a mass murderer. The world you wish for will oppressive and dull but just as dangerous.

Re:What are the police really like?

[Mad-cat]

I blame the paramilitary and militaristic mentality in most police forces. In fact, I would go so far as to say I don't even like the term "police force."

I'm a police officer in Florida. There are several principles I follow which have resulted in my getting only two complaints against me in the past two years.

1. I'm a peace officer, not a law enforcement officer. My goal is the peaceful resolution of conflict, using the law to do so.
2. You cannot insult me. I take offense at nothing while on the job.
3. I will never threaten to arrest someone: I will only warn them that they can be arrested for their actions and will give them several options for peacefully resolving the issue.
4. I will always explain my reasons behind my actions to anyone who asks, so long as safety permits.
5. I will never blindly follow the rules.
6. When in doubt, ask myself if I could talk with my family about what I was about to do to someone without feeling ashamed.

The military mindset is POISON to the civilian police service. If I could do only one thing to improve police relations with the community and performance levels, I would eliminate everything remotely resembling the military. No sergeants, no lieutenants, no military-looking uniforms. Cops should look, think, and act like the civilians they are.