Using your own Robocop for chasing off people

Imagine loitering on a street in Atlanta at night, when suddenly you see something from a science fiction movie, a contraption that can throw icy water at you, or use its infrared camera at you, and then shines a spotlight at you. Further, you can hear what unmistakably sounds like words on a loudspeaker. Enough to scare most drug dealers or other such unsavory characters. And this is exactly what a bar owner in Atlanta does at night = he has built this device to scare people away from a property in the downtown area. And the reason for doing so ? It is a place where children play during the day, but is used for far worse things at night by drug dealers and other criminals:

It's a barbecue smoker mounted on a three-wheeled scooter, and armed with an infrared camera, spotlight, loudspeaker and aluminum water cannon that shoots a stream of icy water about 20 feet. Operated by remote control, the robot spotlights trespassers on property down the street from his bar, O'Terrill's. Using a walkie-talkie, Terrill belts out through the robot's loudspeaker, "That's private property. You guys need to get out of here."
Terrill, an engineer by trade, is also a board member at the day care center. Tired of cleaning up after the shady characters, he decided to take action. That's when he built his downtown Darth Vader of sorts.
"He's a neighborhood vigilante," says Meredith, "and when he came up with this -- you know, I call it Robocop -- I said, 'Praise God.' "
The daycare center is a block from a homeless shelter. Meredith has a security guard at the center who leaves in the early evening. "They know when the guard leaves," she says. "They know when the cleaning crew leaves and then here comes the drug dealers to prey on the homeless people."

The police are not yet opposing this, although if somebody is sprayed with icy water, they could potentially sue and get the police involved.

Alligator blocks traffic

Traffic can choke on freeways for any reason, but an alligator being the reason for the choking is something that is unusual. In Texas, an alligator moved onto a busy freeway, and stopped traffic. Police responding to the scene were puzzled; after all, their training certainly does not cover this.
Police tried their sirens to scare the alligator off, didn't work; they threw orange traffic cones at the alligator, it just snapped at the cones, but couldn't care less otherwise; in fact, at one point, the alligator even assaulted a police car, but no one filed charges against it.
In the end, they use lassos and metal poles to force the alligator off the road, and into a drainage ditch leading to a lake. Read the CNN story here.

Pilot ejected from his own flight

Imagine getting on an airplane and watching the pilot behave in a very animated way on the phone while getting on. Imagine further trying to talk to the pilot about it, and being abused by the pilot. This happened to the passengers of a Northwest Airlines flight with 180 passengers on board. Based on this, FAA authorities and the police were called, who promptly took the pilot aside and began questioning him.
The FAA officals in turn called the airline authorities who removed the pilot from the flight and took him to airline headquarters for further questioning. The flight was cancelled, and the passengers could only suffer as they had to re-scehdule their plans; that too on a Easter weekend when family related plans would be on the minds of a number of passengers.
Read the story here.

Peeking at roommates through hidden cameras

Technology works in strange ways, it can assist criminal activities by misuse of available technology. For example, the technological drive towards making things smaller makes it far easier to conceal cameras in inconvenient ways. So, camera phones are now banned from a lot of gyms and public swimming pools.
In another incident, a voyeur placed a small camera concealed in a shampoo bottle inside a bathroom used by female roommates so as to be able to take pictures and videos of them when they were undressed. He was caught only when another roommate got curious about the shampoo bottle and noticed wires trailing from the back (does that mean if he used a wireless camera, he would never have been caught ?). When police were called in to investigate, they found the wires eventually leading to another roommates TV.
Now the fellow is sitting in jail with numerous charges on him. However, what he has done will make the other roommates more paranoid, and far less willing to trust someone or share with another person. Such invasion of someone's privacy and betrayal of trust needs to be severly punished.

US city sets time limit for how long a dog can bark

A city in New Jersey has got so tired of complaints of people against dogs barking that they are going to outlaw it. That's correct, the city is planning to pass an ordinance that will make it illegal for dogs to bark more than 30 minutes over 2 consecutive days. Right now, they are not planning on defining the type of instrument that will be used to measure and identify the dog that is specifically barking. DNA for dogs to uniquely identify their barking, anyone ?
The city already has nuisance laws that could be used to curtail annoying barking, but they are difficult to enforce. I guess this new law will be easier to enforce. Fines for an offence against this ordinance could be upto $250.
And just so that you know that I am not making this up, read the original story.