Brickbats
Police in Normandy, Missouri, issued a warning to a boy for shoveling snow from his grandmother's home without a permit. The authorities defended the move by saying they've gotten calls about teens pretending to offer snow shoveling services while actually casing homes for potential theft opportunities.
The Okaloosa County, Florida, sheriff's office has charged a teacher and two aides at a school for the disabled with abusing autistic students. Deputies say they locked a 10-year-old and two 8-year-olds in a dark room as punishment. In addition, deputies say they blew a whistle close to one child who is sensitive to noise and held his arms down to keep him from covering his ears.
An Australian police officer has been sentenced to six months in jail for illegally using police databases to snoop on potential dates. Adrian Trevor Moore looked up information on 92 women he found on dating websites. His attorney says he was trying to do "due diligence" before deciding whether to meet them in person, but Moore accessed several women's information on multiple occasions (in one case, 13 times) over a number of years.
A Lethbridge, Alberta, police officer is under investigation after being caught on video repeatedly running over an injured deer with a police truck. The officer responded to a call reporting an injured animal in the street and decided it needed to be euthanized. Police Chief Rob Davis says officers in these cases typically shoot animals, not run them over.
A city ordinance in St. Peters, Missouri, requires all lawns to be at least half grass—but Janice Duffner says she's allergic to grass. Her yard is instead filled with shrubs, flowers, and a small fountain. After a neighbor complained, the city ordered her to tear out some rose bushes and plant grass in their place.
The University of Virginia has suspended the Señoritas Latinas Unidas sorority for "hazing"—because it requires members to study 25 hours a week.
After the city of Raleigh, North Carolina, started charging providers $300 per electric scooter (among other regulations), the company Bird added a $2 transportation fee to the $1 it charges local users to unlock its scooters and the 15 cents a minute it costs to ride them. Mayor Nancy McFarlane insists the price increase was a "profit-making decision [that] has nothing to do with our requirements" and that the city fee is not a tax.
Ashim Mitra, a professor at the University of Missouri–Kansas City, has resigned following complaints from graduate students from India that he used them as personal servants. The students claim he threatened to have their visas revoked if they didn't mow his lawn, care for his dog, and serve as staff at his social events. They also say the university was aware but did not take action because Mitra was so successful in bringing in research money.
This article originally appeared in print under the headline "Brickbats."