Charles Oliver: Man carries a ‘weapon’ to fight the rain

Published 11:40 pm Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Police locked down Cal State San Marcos, diverted traffic to the school and searched the campus after someone reported seeing a man carrying a weapon. After locating the man, cops determined the “weapon” was actually an umbrella.

British Home Secretary Theresa May has announced plans to criminalize domestic abuse that does not involve physical violence or threats of violence. The proposed law would ban “controlling behavior” such as humiliating, causing psychological harm or denying money to a partner.

Former Fayetteville, Ark., police officer Jamison Stiles has been sentenced to five years probation after pleading guilty to one count of second degree sexual assault and one count of release of official documents to an unauthorized person. Stiles had been charged with sexual assault against two women, one of whom he assaulted while he was on duty.

When officials in Cambridge, Md., found out middle school language arts teacher Patrick McLaw has had two novels published they congratulated him on his success. Just kidding. When they found that one of those novels — published three years ago — involved a school shooting, school officials placed him on leave and brought in a police K-9 unit to search the school for explosives and weapons. The search found nothing. Meanwhile, local law enforcement took McLaw in for an emergency psychological evaluation and placed additional officers at the school. They also searched his home for explosives and weapons. That search also found nothing.

Gerber Guzman spent two weeks in the Los Angeles County Jail before the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) figured out he wasn’t the drug dealer they were looking for. It was the second time Guzman has been mistakenly arrested on an outstanding warrant for a man who stole his identity. His wife said the most frustrating part was that this time local officials knew they had the wrong man in jail but could do nothing until the DEA admitted it had made a mistake.

In South Carolina, Summerville High School student Alex Stone was suspended from school and arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct after completing a class assignment. Stone had written that he had used a gun to kill his neighbor’s dinosaur. Police also searched his bag and locker for weapons. They found none. No word on whether they searched to find the body of the dead dinosaur.

A recent government report found that at least 1,400 girls, some as young as 11, had been sexually abused over more than a decade in Rotherham, England. The report found that police and local elected officials knew about at least some of the abuse but did not pursue it because most of the perpetrators were men of Pakistani descent and officials feared they would be seen as racist. Now, British media reports that more than a decade ago, a government researcher tried to push authorities to look into the matter, Instead, they forced her to attend diversity training and warned her not to mention the issue.

Charles Oliver is a staff writer for The Daily Citizen.