LAPD clears itself of wrongdoing
The Los Angeles Police Department announced in April that it had investigated 320 complaints against its officers last year for alleged “racial profiling” and found that not a single one was valid. The Los Angeles Times reported that was at least the sixth consecutive year LAPD reported a perfect record on racial profiling.
‘ WWL-TV reported in April that at least one east New Orleans floodwall, built immediately after Hurricane Katrina, had been temporarily stuffed with newspaper to create seals, but that in the two years since had not been upgraded. Among the stuffing that had not decayed or been eaten by bugs was an issue of Parade magazine of May 21, 2006.
A contractor of the Army Corps of Engineers told a resident at the time that the newspaper seals were used only until money from Washington arrived to finish the job. Two weeks after WWL-TV’s report, the corps repaired the seals properly, but a spokesman insisted the newspaper stuffing “had no effect from a structural or safety factor.”
‘ The Government Accountability Office revealed in April that more than 60,000 of the federal government’s contractors owe a total of about $7.7 billion in unpaid federal taxes, and that health care providers who take Medicare payments owe an additional $1 billion in late taxes. One unnamed company owes $10 million in back taxes, yet the Pentagon did $1 million worth of business with it.
One activist on tax issues pointed out that firms might find it easy to win low-bid contracts if they don’t have the tax expense that their competitors have.
‘ The British government compensates soldiers the equivalent of about $115,000 if they lose a leg in battle. In March, though, the Defense Ministry paid out the equivalent of about $400,000 in disability to a civil servant who had injured his back while lifting a printer, and in May the ministry paid out the equivalent of about $500,000 to an army paratrooper to settle a claim of “humiliating and demeaning” treatment. The soldier had undergone sex-change surgery, converting from “Ian” into “Jan,” yet was ordered by the army to report for a physical exam dressed as Ian.
Great Art!
At an April auction in Beijing, artist Liu Xiaodong’s large (8 feet by 30 feet) oil painting, part of his Three Gorges series, brought the equivalent of about $8 million. The work, “Breeding Ground No. 1,” depicts 11 men in their underwear playing cards.
The Continuing Crisis
In May, eighth-grader Michael Avery of Thousand Oaks, Calif., told the hometown newspaper The Acorn that he was undecided which area high school he would attend next fall. This was a matter of interest in that Avery, 15, is a basketball prodigy and, though undecided on high school, he knows exactly where he will go to college because he had just accepted a full scholarship at the University of Kentucky beginning in 2012. The following week, Kentucky offered another one, to ninth-grader Jeremiah Davis III, to enroll in 2011.
Least Competent Criminals
Police in Mesa, Ariz., chased driver Christopher Psomas, 38, in May after his companion, Ashley Strahan, 20, allegedly tried to pass a forged check at a business. The pair’s car ran red lights at high speeds to get out of town, then left the road near the Salt River Reservation, and when the car became disabled, kept going on foot. However, they ran smack into a bed of chola cactus, becoming virtual pin cushions. At Banner Desert Medical Center, as nurses plucked the needles from his body, Psomas, in pain and in tears, said, “I am so stupid. This is what I get for trying to run from the police.”
Update
In March, News of the Weird reported the bratty behavior of two Boynton Beach, Fla., high school girls who not only swiped money from a Girl Scout selling cookies at a supermarket, but then told a TV station on camera that they were mad because they got caught and had to give the money back.
One of the girls, Stefanie Woods, 18, chose to go to trial on the theft charge in May, and was quickly convicted and will be sentenced in June. A week after the conviction, she also pleaded no-contest to an intervening event in which she allegedly skipped out on a $28 dinner tab at a Denny’s. She said she was sorry for the theft, but that “I still don’t think it gives (the public) the right to be screaming things at me” around town. “People scream things at me every single day, and it’s getting really hard.”
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