Brickbats: April 2024
News of politicians, police, and bureaucrats behaving badly from around the world.
Kentucky's Louisville Metro Police released cellphone videos that show two officers throwing slushies on pedestrians from inside unmarked police vehicles. Officers Bryan Wilson and Curt Flynn pleaded guilty in 2022 in federal court to violating the rights of citizens through arbitrary use of force while on duty. Flynn was sentenced to three months in prison, while Wilson received 30 months in prison, with each sentence to be followed by three years of probation.
J.D. Bales, a former middle school soccer coach at Texas' Bridgeport High School, was charged with felony theft after police say he ran up more than $5,000 in charges on a school district credit card at a Houston strip club. Bridgeport Police Chief Steve Stanford told reporters that Bales initially tried to report the charges as fraud.
A judge in British Columbia ordered former political candidate David Hilderman to stop referring to himself as an engineer. Hilderman, who has an university degree in engineering and works in the electronics and computer industry, used the word to describe himself in campaign materials. "Engineer" is a protected title in Canada, and the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia filed a complaint against Hilderman because he does not have an engineering license.
In Massachusetts, Great Barrington Police Department Police Chief Paul Storti apologized after an officer searched an eighth-grade classroom for a copy of the book Gender Queer after classroom hours. The book contains sexually explicit images. The officer warned an English teacher that "you can't present that kind of material to people under 18" and asked if other books at the school contained similar images.
A deputy U.S. marshal traveling to London to extradite a prisoner was charged by British authorities with being drunk and disruptive on the flight. A woman on the plane accused the marshal of touching her inappropriately, but the police said "no further action" will be taken on that allegation.
New York lawmakers introduced a bill that would require any restaurants located in state highway rest areas to be open seven days a week. While the law would apply to all such restaurants, backers are open about the fact it is aimed at Chick-fil-A, the fast-food chain famously not open on Sundays. The bill would not apply to restaurants operating under current contracts with the state but would apply to any future contracts.
Officials charged New York Police Department Officer Andy Urrutia with grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property, petit larceny, official misconduct, unlawful possession of personal ID information, attempted petit larceny, and attempted identity theft. Urrutia allegedly took a photo of a debit card belonging to a woman who had been arrested and sent the photo to friends with the message "Lunch on me, guys." One of them tried to use the card at a Starbucks that day.
Police in Senatobia, Mississippi, arrested 10-year-old Quantavious Eason for public urination and took him to jail. Officers saw the boy urinating next to his mother's car while she was inside a lawyer's office with a "no public restroom" sign. The police chief called the arrest an "error in judgment" and claimed one of the officers involved would be disciplined and another no longer worked for the department, but a juvenile court judge sentenced Eason to three months of probation and required him to write an essay about Kobe Bryant.
