Weekly Daily Brickbats Archive 2009 July 1-31

The Russian government has closed all of the legal casinos in the country. According to ABC News, the move cost some 400,000 casino workers their jobs. The government plans to restrict casinos to four remote regions of the country.

Klaus Matzka says he had a good time on vacation in London, England, but he'll never go back again. The Austrian man says police detained him and forced him and his sons to delete their photos after they saw them taking pictures of the famed double-decker buses as well as a bus station that Matzka found interesting. They say the police officers told them taking pictures of anything transportation related is forbidden because of terrorism concerns.

Paul Abel says someone punched him while he was stopped at a red light. So he drove around the neighborhood trying to find the man. Abel, who'd been drinking, saw Kaleb Miller and thought he was the man who hit him, so he struck him on the back of the neck with his handgun. The gun went off, striking Miller on the hand. At trial, a judge declared Abel's actions "inappropriate, impudent and ill-advised," but acquitted him of aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, and DUI. Why? Abel was an off-duty cop, and he says he was trying to arrest Miller, who witnesses say wasn't the man who struck him. He says he had to use force when Miller refused to obey his commands.

At about 7 a.m. one morning, Darryl Harris heard a loud thumping at his front door. When he answered it, someone stuck a gun in his face, and handcuffed him. Meanwhile, several Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies began searching his house. They pulled out his four sons and forced them to sit in the porch in their underwear. Every time Harris asked one of the deputies what they were looking for, they just told him to shut up. Only after they found his badge, and verified his was a probation officer, did they tell him they were looking for his brother-in-law, a man who has been in prison since the 1990s.

Security screeners at an airport in Columbus, Ohio, couldn't tell what was in a sealed can inside some luggage they were inspecting. The woman who owned the suitcase insisted it was pickles, but they didn't believe her. They got a bomb squad to blow up the can and found it contained pickled mangoes.