Flashlight Empties Starbucks in SF

It turns out that Monday's pipe bomb scare at a Starbucks on Van Ness in San Francisco was really just a flashlight with corroded batteries, left in the bathroom by a 44-year-old guy who was later arrested for shoplifting at Circuit City. (Click title above for full story.) I used to live two blocks from the Starbucks where this incident occurred, so when the story first broke it caught my attention.

The original story was that police had evacuated the entire building and one police officer was quoted as saying the device, which they claimed to have defused, "would have caused damage if it exploded.'' I guess he should have said the device, "if it had been an actual bomb instead of a rusty flashlight, would have caused damage if it exploded." If he exploded, my little dog Pop-Eye would probably cause damage. Fortunately, he is not a flashlight either. I don't fault the police for doing their job, but this does point out something absurd about our current mindset.

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