Teacher's Pet

December 31, 2007

Shatavia Kendricks, a student at Tampa, Florida's Middleton High School told her principal that special education teacher Christina Butler was having sex with another student. The principal did not report the allegations to police. Instead, school officials questioned Butler and the boy she was allegedly having sex with. Both denied the allegations, so the school suspended Kendricks for seven days. Shortly after that, police pulled over some teenagers in a Jeep that belongs to Butler. During their investigation, they say Butler admitted to having sex with the boy several times. She has been charged with felony lewd or lascivious battery.

Worst Buy

December 28, 2007

Elizabeth Beeland went to a Daytona Beach, Florida, Best Buy to get a CD player for her father. While there, she got an emergency call about her daughter and she stepped outside to take the call, leaving her credit card behind. For some reason, this made a clerk think Beeland was using a stolen credit card, and the clerk spoke to police officer Claudia Wright. Wright approached Beeland, whom she says was "verbally profane" towards her. So Wright Tased her. Wright then arrested Beeland for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. But not for credit card fraud. The card Beeland left behind was, in fact, her own.

The Myth of Mental Illness

December 27, 2007

A Russian psychiatric board ordered an opponent of president Vladimir Putin detained a day before a planned demonstration. The board placed Artem Basyrov in a mental institution where he was held in an isolation ward for almost three weeks. He is still confined but is now allowed to have visitors. Basyrov is one of several opponents of Putin who have been recently forced into mental hospitals.

I See Britain

December 26, 2007

The crew of a British Ministry of Defense helicopter broke low-flying rules so they could spy on a sun-bathing au pair. The downdraft from the chopper damaged the Sussex mansion it was flying over. In fact, it caused some £250,000 in damages, say the owners. The ministry says it should not be held liable for the damages because the pilot did not know he needed permission to fly that low.

Spreading Christmas Cheer

December 25, 2007

Erla Osk Arnardottir Lillendahl planned to spend a few days in New York City shopping and sightseeing with friends. But she was arrested as soon as she arrived at JFK Airport. It seems Lillendahl overstayed a visa to the United States more than 10 years ago. She says she was held at JFK for two days and interrogated. She says she was not allowed to call her relatives during that time, and she says she was denied food and drink for part of her detention. Her feet and hands were chained and she was then removed to a jail in New Jersey where she was interrogated some more before she was finally deported. Iceland's foreign minister has demanded that the U.S. government explain its treatment of Lillendahl.

Pay Up

December 24, 2007

In Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Deputy Constable Steven Sokoloff  went to a car dealership and handcuffed general sales manager Dennis Crilly. He told Crilly he owed $150 in fines resulting from an unpaid $10 parking ticket and was going to jail. But the ticket wasn't even issued to Crilly. It was given to someone who'd bought a car at the dealership months earlier. Crilly and others tried to explain that to Sokoloff for about 40 minutes as customers left the lot. Finally, local police arrived and convinced Sokoloff to take off the handcuffs.

Smokey and the Bandit

December 21, 2007

All of the states that border Tennessee have lower cigarette taxes than Tennessee, much lower in many cases. As you might expect, Tennessee smokers eager to save money buy their smokes over the state line. Now, the Tennessee Department of Revenue has started posting agents to watch cigarette sales in stores in other states. Tennessee law bans people from bringing more than two cartoons of smokes into the state without paying Tennessee taxes. So the revenuers look for anyone with Tennessee tags buying cigarettes and call ahead to officers in Tennessee, who can arrest the miscreants after they cross back into the volunteer state. Officials may even seize their car if they have at least three cartoons in there.

The Wrong Man

December 20, 2007

New York City police dragged Francis Evelyn in handcuffs out of the school were he had served as a custodian for nearly 20 years. An 8-year-old girl had accused him of repeatedly molesting her over a period of weeks. Authorities paraded Evelyn before TV cameras and threw him into jail, where he says he was forced to wear only an adult diaper and was threatened by other inmates. Then, just days later, prosecutors asked a night judge to drop the charges against him. It seems the girl showed no physical signs of being molested. Oh, and she originally said the man who molested her was white. Evelyn is black. Evelyn, who is suing the city, also says that when he was released from jail, corrections officials refused to return the $84 that was in his pockets when he was booked.

Not This Again

December 19, 2007

Police in Bangladesh arrested cartoonist Arifur Rahman and seized copies of a newspaper supplement containing one of his cartoons. The cartoon made a word play on the name Mohammed, and many Muslims said it insulted their religion. Bangladeshi law allows people to be prosecuted for hurting religious or public sentiments.

The Grinch That Stole Free Delivery

December 18, 2007

France's highest court has ruled that Amazon.com may no longer offer free delivery of books in that country. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by the French booksellers union. The price of books is highly regulated in France, and booksellers may not discount books more than 5 percent of the publisher's suggested price.

Speak No Evil

December 17, 2007

The Alberta Canada Human Rights Commission says former pastor Stephen Boissoin and the Christian group he belonged to broke Alberta's human rights law. Boissoin wrote a letter to the editor of a local paper comparing homosexuals to pedophiles and drug dealers. That, said the commission, exposed gay people to hatred and contempt. The penalty for Boissoin's crime has not yet been determined.

That's One Way to Make Yourself Understood

December 14, 2007

Police forced their way into Donnell William's home in Wichita and found him just getting out of his tub, with a towel around his waist. They say they told him to show them his hands and he didn't. Williams says he wasn't wearing his hearing aid and without it he's deaf. "I kept going to my ear yelling that I was scared.  I can't hear!  I can't hear," he said. Apparently, the officers didn't hear him because when he didn't comply with their orders, they Tased him. They say they were concerned about their safety. The police were responding a call about a shooting, a call that turned out to be a false one.

Uprooting the Criminal Element

December 13, 2007

Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov has ordered all female civil servants to wear Islamic headscarves. Those who don't will lose their jobs. Kadyrov has also reportedly declared women to be the root of all crime committed in Chechnya because they have sex with men.

Baby's Got Her Blue Jeans On

December 12, 2007

The coming of winter doesn't mean that Islamic police in Iran will end their crackdown on "immodest" clothing. "Tight trousers tucked inside long boots while wearing short overcoats are against Islamic codes," said Tehran police chief Ahmad Reza Radan. He also warned women that wearing a hat instead of a scarf is unIslamic.

You Are So Tucked

December 11, 2007

Officials at Rogers High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, suspended 70 students for five days for protesting a new rule mandating they tuck their shirts into their pants. Officials say the protestors broke a school rule against "encouraging other students to violate school rules or regulations."

Passing Notes

December 10, 2007

A seventh-grader in Parker, Colorado, is facing disciplinary action for making a list of people he doesn't like. "We determined there apparently was no threat or intent to harm anyone," said a spokeswoman for the school system. Still, officials at Sagewood Middle School sent a letter home to parents about the list, notified the parents of children on the list and plans to discipline the boy who wrote it.

That Will Teach Them

December 7, 2007

In Great Britain, parents of children who have been expelled from school now face fines if those children are found outside their homes during school hours. If authorities find such children in a public place without good reason, they can fine the parents £50 or £100. If the parents don't pay, they could be prosecuted and forced to pay a £1,000 fine or perform a community sentence.

Getting Trimmed

December 6, 2007

The Glendale, California, Fire Department ordered Ann and Mike Collard to trim trees on their property to maintain five feet of vertical clearance between tree limbs and the roof of their house. So they hired a tree trimmer and paid him $3,000 to bring them up to code. The tree trimmer was almost finished with the job when the city arborist drove past, noticed him and ordered him to stop. It seems that in meeting fire department regulations, the Collards had violated a city ordinance protecting indigenous trees. Then came the really bad news. After reviewing the case, the city fined them $347,600. Once the story hit local media, however, city council members said that when they increased fines for violating the tree ordinance recently they never expected anyone to, well, actually receive large fines. They've put collection of the fine on hold. But the Collards say they are not resting easy.

Tracking Sex Offenders

December 5, 2007

Denise Berndsen lives in West Allis, Wisconsin, but it was a SWAT team from Milwaukee that knocked in the door to her apartment, roughed up her, her 74-year-old father and a man she was dating  and tore the place apart. After handcuffing everyone, pointing guns at them and breaking furniture, the cops figured out the man they were looking for didn't live there. In fact, he'd been evicted about six weeks earlier, something they'd have found out if they'd asked the landlord before storming the apartment. The police, of course, didn't apologize. "They said, 'We're sorry. I guess you're just one more of his victims,'" Berndsen told local media. "I said, no, we're <i>your</i> victims."

They Didn't Catch the Robber. But They Did Kill a Dog

December 4, 2007

Deputies from the Crow Wing County, Minnesota, Sheriff's Department showed up at Jennifer Stiernagel's home one morning. They'd noticed the silver Camry parked in her driveway. Someone driving a silver Camry had robbed a bank earlier that day in nearby Garrison. As she talked to one deputy in her front yard and her two-year-old son watched from the deck, she noticed another deputy walking up to Basset Hound and her Terrier Lab. The hound began to bark. The lab began to growl. So the deputy shot and killed the lab, which the sheriff's office says was behaving in a threatening manner.

Close Enough for Law Enforcement

December 3, 2007

Marvin Lopez went to the Orange County, Florida, courthouse to pay a traffic ticket. That's where he was arrested on an outstanding warrant for DUI and reckless driving. Lopez told authorities they had the wrong man. He says one jailer even remarked that he looked nothing like the man they wanted. But his lawyer says the sheriff's office never compared his fingerprints to those of the Marvin Lopez wanted for the traffic offense. So Lopez, the wrong Marvin Lopez, spent 37 days in jail until a prosecutor realized they had the wrong man during a pre-trial hearing.