Brickbats

Police in Odessa, Ukraine, arrested a man in a Chewbacca costume for illegally campaigning for mayoral candidate Darth Vader.

Three pilots at Laughlin Air Force Base have received letters of reprimand, effectively ending their careers, after texting each other song lyrics containing the word "molly," a slang term for the drug MDMA. An investigation found no evidence they were actually using drugs.

Officials held students in their classrooms at Lehman High School in Texas while they investigated an alleged gun threat. They eventually determined that a student had misheard someone asking for some gum.

After Andrea Ellis cut her arm on some glass, her sister saw a Columbus, Ohio, police car passing by and ran out to flag it down. Bad decision. As the officer approached the house, he decided the family dog was a threat, pulled his gun out, and fired. The bullet missed the dog but hit Andrea's 4-year-old daughter in the leg, shattering her bone. The officer then ran back to his car and drove away.

Charges in a number of massage parlor arrests were thrown out after it was revealed that three undercover Minneapolis police officers had had sexual contact with the suspects. After their names were revealed in court documents, the officers decided to sue the city, the county, and the state. They say their reputations have been damaged and that they've received negative comments about their behavior.

The Saudi religious police arrested the head of a Riyadh kindergarten after a rainbow mural was painted on the building. Officials accused the school of promoting homosexuality.

Officers from the Jeanerette, Louisiana, city marshal's office stormed into Scott and Nancy Landry's house and pulled the family out at gunpoint after finding a stolen vehicle parked on the street outside the home. The family was not involved in the theft. Marshal Fernest Martin nonetheless insists the officers acted exactly "like we were taught and trained."

Jamario Wilson spent six months in a Harris County, Texas, jail for robbery after the victim identified him in a lineup. His first attorney kept pushing him to take a plea deal that would have sent him to prison for 25 years, so he got a new attorney, who was apparently the first person to notice that a cellphone photo of the actual robber showed the criminal had tattoos. Wilson doesn't. After this was pointed out, prosecutors dropped the charges.

Police in Finland are asking the public to notify them if they see any restaurant selling pizza for less than six euros. Cops say there's no way anyone can sell pizza that cheap unless they aren't paying taxes.

In Logan County, West Virginia, Assistant District Attorney Chris White has been suspended for pulling out a gun in the D.A.'s office and threatening to shoot the place up. The office's Halloween decorations included many fake spiders, and White reportedly has arachnophobia.