Community ClicksGesturing
In April, the town of Olathe, Kan., became the second city in two years to settle lawsuits filed by citizens who were arrested for flashing their middle fingers at police officers, thus appearing to acknowledge that flipping the bird contemptuously at a cop is expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment. Philadelphia paid out $50,000; Olathe, one-sixteenth the size, paid out $5,000.
Inexplicable
When Joseph Velardo, 28, was arrested in Port St. Lucie, Fla., in April after shoplifting items from a Staples store, he for some reason expressed relief that the charges would prevent him from being accepted by law schools. He explained that, since the value of the goods was over the $300 line that separates a mere misdemeanor from a 3rd-degree felony, law schools, thankfully, could no longer accept him. While officers were busy being puzzled about all that, the Staples manager told the police that the actual value of Velardo’s take was $276.88.
>>> Justin Massler, 27, charged with criminal stalking of 28-year-old businesswoman-heiress Ivanka Trump, was released on bail in New York City in April but explained to a New York Daily News reporter that he intended to alter his approach.
Instead of imposing himself on Trump, he said he would “become like a big-time millionaire, real estate mogul, so that she’s the one who contacts me.”
Unclear concept
Schools’ conventional “zero tolerance” policies prohibiting guns or weapons on campus not only apply (as they have recently) to drawings of guns and to a 2-inch-long toy charm in the shape of a gun. But at an Ionia, Mich., school, to making the familiar, thumb-up hand representation of a gun, for which Mason Jammer, 6, was suspended in March.
>>> Carly Houston, 29, was arrested in Naperville, Ill., in March after a rowdy early-morning dispute with a taxi driver, and, given her customary “one phone call” to ask a friend to post bond for her, she chose instead to call 9-1-1 and report that she was “trapped inside a detention facility” (thus causing police to add “abuse of 9-1-1” to the charges).
Latest protests
In April, outdoing the recent partisan spats in the U.S. Congress, several dozen members of the Ukrainian parliament squared off over a cooperation-with-Russia bill that eventually involved headlocks, punching, a smoke bomb, glue (in the voting machines) and cartons of eggs tossed at the speaker’s platform. Russian president Dmitry Medvedev called it the chamber’s “traditional elegance.”
>>> Sweden’s Metro newspaper reported in March that a 21-year-old inmate at Kirseberg prison in Malmo faces discipline for continuing his protests against jail conditions by aiming his gas-passing directly at guards.
Readers’ choice
Albert Bailey, 27, and a 16-year-old buddy were charged with robbery of a People’s United Bank in Fairfield, Conn., in March, after they made it much too easy for police by calling the bank beforehand and demanding that money be set aside for them to pick up at a certain time. Police were waiting in the parking lot.
>>> Megan Barnes, 37, was arrested in March after being spotted driving erratically in Cudjoe Key, near Key West, Fla. After several implausible explanations, Barnes admitted she had a razor and was giving herself a “bikini shave” as she drove. Several traffic charges were filed against her.
