Weekly Daily Brickbats Archive 2010 August 15-31

Cops from several local agencies in Sebastian County, Arkansas, entered the wrong house while trying to serve a warrant in a drug investigation. Officials admit they had gone into the home and handcuffed a man and woman before they actually checked the address on the mailbox. They say when they did look at the address they realized they were at the wrong house and released everyone.

New York City officials have agreed to pay $9.9 million to Barry Gibbs, who spent 19 years in prison after being framed for murder by a corrupt detective. That detective, Louis J. Eppolito, was himself later convicted of a number of crimes, including murder, that he committed while working for the Mafia.

When a student at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s Upper St. Clair High School claimed that a boy had raped her and another student, Principal Michael Ghilani didn’t report the assaults to police. Instead, he ordered school resource officers to follow the girl in order to catch students involved in what he believed to be consensual sex. Instead, they lost track of the girl, and she says the boy raped her again. The boy has since pleaded guilty to sexual assault. The girl and her family are now suing the school.

The Milwaukee school system is facing a huge budget deficit and has laid off hundreds of teachers. At the same time, the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association has taken the school board to court to force it to cover Viagra and other erectile dysfunction drugs in its health insurance plans. The school board says the benefit would cost it about $786,000 a year.

In Great Britain, the Bristol City Council has barred white people from applying for two two-year training jobs that pay £18,000 a year. They say they want to boost the diversity of city staff, which is just 7 percent minority, but they also say the scheme is legal because the posts are just training positions with no guarantee of a full-time job after they end.