Fun_People Archive
27 Oct
Stupid Authorities Tricks 

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 93 14:37:49 PDT
To: Fun_People
Subject: Stupid Authorities Tricks

From: WEIRDNUZ.295 (News of the Weird, October 1, 1993)

* In August, Judge Robert Schillberg released shoplifter Leroy Kelley
without penalty in Lynnwood, Wash., even though Kelley had just pleaded
guilty to stealing two packs of Marlboros from a Safeway store.  Schillberg
fined Kelley $1, which the judge then paid out of his own pocket, because
he believes "the store is more culpable than [Kelley] is" for selling
cigarettes in the first place since they are such dangerous products.
[Oregonian-Seattle Times, Aug93]

* Officials of the Katy (Tex.) Independent School District sent parents
formal letters of apology in September for having distributed a sexual
conduct manual which officials belatedly concluded went too far.  Among the
listed violations, requiring expulsion, explained to all students from the
first grade up were having sexual contact with the genitals or anuses of
animals. [Dallas Morning News, Sept93]

* In July, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration rescinded an
earlier decision it had made to fine a Boise, Idaho, plumbing company $8,000
for rules violations during a rescue of a construction worker in a collapsed
trench.  Originally, OSHA had cited the company because, among other things,
rescue workers had failed to go get their hard hats and put them on before
attempting the rescue. [News Release of U. S. Senator Dirk Kempthorne of
Idaho, 7-19-93]

* In Rome, Ga., last fall, Rusty Strickland, 23, was sentenced to 12 years
in prison when a substance the police said was cocaine was found in plastic
bags in his home.  At the time, Strickland begged for the police chemist to
analyze the contents; the chemist affirmed that the substance was cocaine.
After Strickland had served six months of his sentence, police chemists ran
another test and found that the bags all along contained only soap.  The
original chemist, who had sworn in court that he had tested the bag but had
not, was fired. [San Francisco Recorder- Fulton County Daily Report,
10-8-92]

* In February, in the midst of an abnormally wet winter and a $1 billion
budget shortfall, according to the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles County
agreed to a six- month, $400-a-day contract with a Utah cloud-seeding
company to be on standby in case of a drought. [Los Angeles Times, 2-19-93]

* In April 1993 in Quebec, Andre Saint-Jean was finally given work--named
an assistant deputy minister in the Cultural Communities and Immigration
Department.  For the previous 3-1/2 years, he had been drawing $98,400
annually, including one raise, doing absolutely nothing as vice president
of the government's legal aid agency because his supervisor refused to
assign him an office.  Civil service rules require that an idle worker
continue to draw his salary until a suitable assignment comes along.
[Globe & Mail-CP, 5-1-93]

* In July, Sacramento, Calif., police began a crackdown on the city's
homeless who were illegally camping out.  Numerous citations were written,
but almost as fast as the citations came to court, the court clerk
--following official procedures-- voided them because they lacked home
addresses for the accused. [Sacramento Bee, 7-30-93]

Copyright 1993, Universal Press Syndicate.  All rights reserved.  Released
for the personal use of readers.  No commercial use may be made of the
material or of the name News of the Weird.
[=] © 1993 Peter Langston []