Brickbats: February 2021

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot campaigned on a promise to reduce the city’s dependence on fines and fees to balance its budget, noting that fines and fees fall disproportionately on the poor and minorities. Now that Lightfoot is facing the possibility of a more than $1 billion deficit in 2021, her budget proposal calls for $35 tickets for anyone the city’s speed cameras detect driving as little as 6 mph over the limit.

When Geauga County, Ohio, Juvenile Court Judge Timothy J. Grendell ordered two teenage boys to resume visitation with their estranged father, they refused. So Grendell had them locked up in a juvenile detention center for the weekend instead.

 Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, District Attorney David Prater has charged two former detention officers and their supervisor with cruelty to a prisoner and conspiracy. Prater says the three forced inmates to listen to the children’s song “Baby Shark” for extended periods of time.

Qatari officials took all the women off a flight scheduled to leave for Australia in October and strip-searched them. An infant had been found in a restroom at the airport terminal, and officials were reportedly examining the women for signs that one of them had recently given birth.

Four police officers in Milan, Italy, stopped a couple and issued them a 400 euro ($486) fine for kissing in public, a violation of the nation’s mandatory mask rule. The couple protested that they are engaged and have been romantically involved for two years, but police would not budge.

In October, the Gloucestershire Constabulary in England said it would begin patrolling routes out of Wales looking for Welsh drivers who appear to be taking long trips. Cops will stop such drivers and order