I'm sort of in the middle on this. I'm going to number my thoughts, just because it'll help me organise them. I hope it doesn't come across as confrontational.

1. No offence DC, but I wouldn't give that source the time of day. The only things it links to are itself and one other site that reads like the worst sort of far right conspiracy site to me. That's not to say that some of the stuff on there isn't true, but I'd want to see some corroboration from more reputable sources before I made a judgement
2. I'm still not 100% clear on whether anyone genuinely believed it was a bomb or not. We've got folks asserting one way or the other in this thread and the various news links provided don't seem to be truly conclusive in either direction. I think most folks would agree that an arrest if the school and/or the police thought it was genuine would not be unreasonable but that "if" seems like a doubtful one.
3. A bomb hoax is a prosecutable offence. Any hoax that wastes the emergency services time is prosecutable. When I was at school a bunch of kids called the fire brigade out. They weren't arrested because nobody was able to tell who'd placed the call at the time but the call recordings were subsequently listened to, the kids were identified and their parents were prosecuted and had to pay a substantial fine (the kids were also suspended but that's by the by). If this was a deliberate hoax (and that sounds like the most likely explanation to me) then I'm 50/50 as to whether it should have resulted in an arrest (that's really down to police discretion) but I have no real doubt that it should have resulted in some kind of prosecution. An arrest might have been overkill but I don't think the kid is in much of a position to complain about it - we reap what we sow.
4. As per usual with these stories, I'm not seeing anything that really indicates that race/religion was an issue. Whenever something like this comes up the left declare loudly that the police/army/bus conductors are all racists while the right declare loudly that all Muslims are a security threat that needs to be stamped out forthwith. Neither side ever bothers spending much time looking for evidence of whether a WASP would be more or less likely to engage in such activity or whether they would be treated any differently as a result.


So I don't know where I stand on this. It sounds to me like it was probably badly handled but I'd hesitate to lionise this kid either. He was probably just an idiot kid whose prank turned out to be way more successful than he bargained.