Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cpl. Mike White drove to a house in the Fraser Valley because of a report that several shots had been fired. He didn't see anything unusual, so he didn't get out of his car to investigate. If he had, he might have seen the two people in the house who had been shot. Four days later, a neighbor discovered the corpse of Guthrie Jolan McKay. The neighbor also found Lisa Dudley, alive but badly injured. Dudley died while being transported to the hospital. White was docked a day's pay for not properly investigating the reported shots.
In North Carolina, officials with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools say they made a few mistakes. It turns out that 11 students who "graduated" from Garinger High School didn't actually have enough credits to graduate. They found out only after the graduation ceremony where the students received their diplomas. Among those 11 students was the class "valedictorian." She's currently in summer school, and officials are now re-running the numbers trying to figure out who the real valedictorian is.
Arlene Tessitore says officials at Memorial Middle School in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, forced her two daughters to take an explicit sexual quiz despite their protestations and without her knowledge. School officials admit giving students the quiz but say they were forced to give out the survey as a requirement for a federal grant.
Emil Linnell called Sweden's emergency dispatch service several times complaining that he could not breathe and asking for an ambulance. But each time, the nurse handling the calls insisted that Linnell sounded just fine. So an ambulance never came. A neighbor found Linnell dead two hours later. An autopsy revealed he died of a ruptured spleen.
Health officials in Maryland have warned summer camp operators to get parents' permission before letting campers use sunscreen. They had also originally warned them to be cautious in allowing staff to assist campers in applying sunscreen and not to allow campers to aid each other applying sunscreen, but after some criticism, they seem to be backing down. Officials say the rules were meant to prevent improper touching.
A sergeant and a deputy with the Floyd County, Georgia, sheriff's office have resigned, and two other deputies have been suspended after they took photos of the girlfriend of a jail inmate hugging another man in an attempt to humiliate him. The photos were taken at a party hosted by one of the deputies, and the woman was a probationer. As a condition of her probation, she was not supposed to drink alcohol, but she did at the party, so the deputies were also punished for helping her violate the terms of her probation.
The IRS mistakenly reported that dozens on nonprofits, including some of the nation's largest colleges, had their nonprofit status revoked for failing to provide required paperwork. In the cases of the colleges, it appears that other nonprofits associated with the schools, such as student organizations, were the groups that had their status revoked.
In Wales, officials of the Cardiff Royal Infirmary have apologized for giving elderly patients tambourines to shake when they needed a nurse. The musical instruments were given to patients when they were in the hospital's day room, which does not have an electronic system to call for help.
Refuse collectors in Bramhall, England, refused to pick up Kay McIntyre's green bin, claiming that weeds she had put in had too much dirt on them. When McIntyre complained, the local council sent out a "community recycling officer" to check the amount of soil on the weeds. The officer found there wasn't too much dirt and the council sent collectors back to pick it up.
A court in Taiwan has sentenced a blogger to 30 days in jail and two years probation for writing a negative restaurant review. The blogger, whom media identified only by her surname Liu, wrote that the restaurant's noodles were too salty and that it had cockroaches. The court said she should not have said the restaurant's food was salty because she tried only one dish during just one visit. The court also ordered her to pay NT$200,000 to the restaurant in compensation for lost business.
A jury convicted former Washington County, Missouri, sheriff's department chief deputy Vernon Wilson of violating the civil rights of four inmates. Wilson beat two of the inmates and slammed their heads against concrete walls. He paid inmates in cigarettes to beat the other two.
A federal jury has awarded Tricia Wachsmuth $30,001 after finding Powell, Wyoming, police officers forced her to walk in front of them as a human shield while searching her home and unsafely used a flashbang grenade during the search.
Officials at Donald A. Wilson Secondary School in Whitby, Canada, suspended Jack Christie for 20 days because of satirical animated videos he posted on YouTube. The videos, which were also investigated by local police, include a mock political candidate promising to invade Sweden and seize its attractive women. Christie says that since media picked up the story of his suspension the number of hits on his videos has quadrupled.
The Oregon House of Representatives has voted to ban the sale of "any substance or object that is capable of causing death to another person" for the purpose assisting someone to commit suicide. They seek to stop the sale of suicide kits, consisting of a plastic hood and tubing, that at least one Oregon resident has used to take his life.
San Francisco's Animal Control and Welfare Commission has proposed that the city ban the sale of pets, including goldfish. The move is aimed at reducing impulse buys of animals as well as fighting what commissioners see as inhumane breeding practices.
Nogales, Arizona, police officer Pedro Molera has sued his department and former sergeant Sergio Bon after Bon Tasered Molera's penis.
When teachers at England's Nathaniel Newton Infant School spotted two 7-year-old boys playing army, they immediately broke up the game, then they contacted the boys' parents and let them know such threatening behavior is "unacceptable."
A Broward County, Florida, sheriff's deputy spotted Robin Brown when she was bird watching one day. He thought that the sage she had with her was marijuana, and a field test seemed to confirm that. He didn't arrest her then, but confiscated the sage and sent it to the crime lab for testing. Unfortunately for Brown, Assistant State Attorney Mark Brown didn't wait for the sage to be tested before getting a warrant issued for her arrest. A deputy showed up at her place of work and took her away in handcuffs to jail, where she was subjected to a body-cavity search. It was a month later before her attorney found the sage had never been tested. The test confirmed it was not marijuana, and the state dropped all charges.
Over the past five years, police officer Daniel Alvarado has been suspended four times and reprimanded or cautioned at least 12 times, including six times for not obeying orders. So his supervisors in Texas's Northside Independent School District Police Department should not have been surprised when he disobeyed an order to stay with a teenage boy he'd just seen get punched at a bus stop. Instead, Alvarado chased the boy he had seen throw the punch, 14-year-old Derek Lopez. Minutes later, Alvarado shot Lopez, who was unarmed.
In Massachusetts, Westfield High School officials suspended Tom Costello and Ryan Angco and barred them from attending their graduation after the duo performed a mock battle with a Star Wars theme in the school cafeteria. Principal Raymond Broderick said the two could well have hit someone with their toy light sabers.
After finding the Christian owners of a bed and breakfast guilty of discrimination for turning away homosexual guests, Britain's Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) says it will decide whether "gay only" guesthouses also violate the law. The EHRC says it may take action against hospitality businesses that discriminate against heterosexuals.
Several people saw four men push 14-year-old Dafarus Coleman and take his jacket aboard a Metro bus in King County, Washington. But when some of them called 911 to report a crime in progress, dispatchers refused to send a deputy. "You cannot report a theft that did not occur to you. The person who the items were stolen from has to report this," a dispatcher told one caller.
The French government has banned TV broadcasters from mentioning Facebook or Twitter unless it is part of a story. That means TV stations can't direct viewers to their Facebook page or Twitter feed.
Officials in Glasgow, Scotland, sent a letter to parents of students at King's Park Secondary School warning them not to allow their children to wear short skirts or tight pants because that could arouse the interests of pedophiles. The letter came after a King's Park man pleaded guilty to posing as 14-year-old girl to entice children to perform sex acts in front of their web cameras.
Officials in Charlotte, North Carolina, fined the Albermarle Road Presbyterian Church $4,000 for improperly pruning trees on the church's property. Tom Johnson, the city's senior urban forester, said the church can escape the fine by replacing the trees.
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