There are very few instances when eating anything at all from McDonald's deserves a pass. Post-joint/blunt/bong rip/whatever is one of them. But when you're getting high in public it pays to be at least somewhat vigilant (when possible). Just ask flagrant 21-year-old Jose Barrera of Elgin, Illinois:
According to a lawsuit filed by a lesbian named Amanda Booker, police officers in Bartow County, Georgia, took her to the house of an evangelical "ex-gay therapist" to "attempt to convert Ms. Booker from being a lesbian," rather than taking her to court-appointed rehab.
The rape trial of NYPD officer Kenneth Moreno, accused of raping a drunk East Village woman in her apartment while he was supposed to be, whattayacallit, protecting and serving, is, at the very least, the source of America's greatest storytelling.
Imagine blowing through a stop sign, then getting Tasered eight times by cops for it? That's what happened to 43-year-old Allen Kephart in in Blue Jay, California this week. A San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman, Cindy Bachman, told the Los Angeles Times that Kephart was pulled over and "became combative and uncooperative." Then this happened:
In your harrowing Wednesday media column: an Al Jazeera reporter is held in Iran, Chattanooga newsman in Nazi cop row, Uganda's tabloids go hard on "Homos," the NYT's web traffic inches downward, and Bill Gallo dies.
Jonathan Martis of Omaha was shot by police on Thursday after calling them to his house. His mother says he had been feeling depressed and telling people he wanted to die. But this fact doesn't fully explain why he was dressed up as a pirate.
A video that was shot last January in Phoenix — showing police officer Patrick Larrison shove a 15-year-old girl into a wall after she'd been in a drunken altercation with her mother in a strip mall parking lot — has surfaced and is causing some commotion in the city. When a colleague of Larrison's saw the video this week they alerted superiors at the Phoenix Police Department, which has since put Larrison on paid leave pending an investigation. Sgt. Trent Crump told the AP, "At face value, the video is concerning to us."
Police love to tout Tasers as "non-lethal" weapons. Oh, but sometimes they are lethal. Like early yesterday morning in Waterbury, Connecticut, when police arrested a man on a public disturbance call:
Fox News chief Roger Ailes and his wife Elizabeth must get spooked a lot in their weekend home in rural Putnam Valley, N.Y., because they call 911 a lot. During one 30-day period last summer, police cars were dispatched to their address six times.
Some newspapers are up in arms over a police union guy allegedly trying to "fix" a speeding ticket for someone — which is surely a very rare occurence in the world of law enforcement. And in a Post EXCLUSIVE, we get transcripts of a wiretapped conversation that paints a picture of what one union delegate thinks of cops: "One thing that I know about these Highway dudes is that they're all pretty much assholes, you know what I'm saying? [...] They're all dickheads." Outrageous! Next thing you know, an EXCLUSIVE wiretap will come out with someone saying that all cops have a chip on their shoulder, like flat tops and unironic moustaches, and target people who aren't white on dubious grounds.
While it's still, obviously, legal to watch cops ticket a cyclist for riding his bike on the sidewalk, we recommend not cracking any jokes—even at the cyclist's expense—because then you might get arrested. As this gentleman learned.
A cop in Mesquite, Texas, decided to pepper spray a baby squirrel at a middle school while horrified children and teachers looked on. He keeps on going even though they plead with him to stop. Now that the cop has been caught on film, let's hope PETA or some other animal rights group comes calling. Just when you thought kids having cell phones in schools was a bad idea! [via NYM]
Ubiquitous ingenue Amanda Seyfried had a bit of trouble while leaving the London premiere of Little Red Riding Hood last night. No, her eyes weren't bleeding from watching the horrible movie. She was given a parking ticket and refused to take it.
Two acts of violence do not cancel each other out. Rushing in to break a public fight, a power-tripped Savannah cop hits a girl with his nightstick, maces her and slams her face first into the asphalt.
There are times when taser justice is overkill — rushing a baseball field, riding a bike, being a grouchy granny, and so on. But some blatant violations of the law most certainly do deserve a tasering (sometimes with a macing on top). Violations like double parking your car, as 26-year-old Brooklyn security guard Jonathan Zimmerman did outside of his friend's house last April. From the Daily News:
A new report from the Drug Policy Alliance alleges that New York City is currently spending something like $75 million every year on low-level marijuana possession charges—the vast majority of which are directed at black and Latino youths.
