Weekly Daily Brickbats Archive 2006 April 22-31

The Chechen government has told female government workers to wear headscarves at work. A government spokesman says headscarves are only recommended not mandated. But female employees report they were threatened with the loss of their jobs if they show up with heads uncovered. Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov has pushed through a number of Islamic oriented decrees, including banning gambling machines.

A Tampa, Florida, police officer reportedly tampered with traffic lights near public housing complexes. Sgt. Gene Strickland told supervisors that he electronically held signals on red long enough to run computer checks on vehicle tags. Strickland apparently was looking for vehicles that had been reported stolen. It isn't clear how many vehicles he ran such checks on, but Strickland says he didn't issue any citations as a result of the checks.

Tennessee authorities are investigating Coopertown Mayor Danny Crosby for refusing to accept a check in payment for a speeding ticket. Nashville resident T. Allen Morgan wrote the check after being cited for doing 50 mph in a 35 mph zone. Morgan says he didn't see any signs warning that the speed limit had dropped from 55 mph, and he wrote "for speed trap" on the check. After Crosby saw the ticket, he told the clerk to tell Morgan to write another check without the words "speed trap" on it or appear in court on traffic charges. Coopertown gets a third of its budget from traffic fines. AAA is considering designating the city a "traffic trap."

London's Sunday Times reports that British police officers have been told that if they shoot suspected suicide bombers they won't face criminal charges even if they kill an innocent persons "The police had been told that they did not have to prove that they had acted reasonably in shooting dead an unarmed person. All they had to show was that they �believed� they were acting reasonably, a much more liberal level of defence," the paper reports.

In England, Andy Tierney was fined 50 pounds for tossing junk mail into a public trash can. Local officials have defended the fine, saying that mail is classified as "domestic litter" and should not be put in public cans.