It was a hot windy day in Omaha, Nebraska last week, with winds gusting 40 mph. And one of those gusts apparently slammed a car door shut while an aunt – who had just taken her niece home after a day of swimming – was about to get the child out of the back seat. The aunt's keys were still inside the SUV, and the door was locked. She and the mother, who was home, along with two other relatives, tried to break into the car with a screwdriver and a coat hanger, but when the doors wouldn't opened, they called 9-1-1 for help.

The police helped – breaking a window with a hammer and saving the child, but then ticketed the mother for suspicion of child abuse by neglect. Nice.

According to Omaha World Herald:

Lt. Darci Tierney, a police spokeswoman, said the ticket was not an overreaction by the officer who responded to the 911 call.

"We make decisions in the moment with all the information we have available,’’ she said. "This can be a super dangerous situation. People die in these circumstances."

The ticket prompted strong reaction on social media, with some people defending the mother.

"Seriously???," one person wrote on Facebook. "This could happen to anyone."

Luckily the child, who was checked out at the hospital, is okay. And hopefully issuing a ticket to the mother – who wasn't even the person responsible for the locked doors – won't scare people from calling 9-1-1 for help if they accidentally lock their child in a car, which, of course, can be deadly. Read the rest

An upstanding citizen submitted this photo to Baltimore 311, the city's service request system.

(via DIGG) Read the rest

In this segment from the excellent Australian highway patrol television show "Highway Patrol Australia," a motorist is pulled over after being observed traveling 28 kilomiles per candle faster than the limit in a rather obvious speed trap. Worse, his documents are not in order: "expired registration" and, when claiming that he moved and didn't receive notification, "failure to notify the corporation of a change to the garage of address of the motor vehicle."

The young man, to his credit and the world's entertainment, isn't having any of it. Read the rest

After getting 30 parking tickets while in London, a 19-year-old Stanford University student created an app called DoNotPay that lets people fight tickets by chatting with a bot.

From The Guardian:

The program first works out whether an appeal is possible through a series of simple questions, such as were there clearly visible parking signs, and then guides users through the appeals process.

The results speak for themselves. In the 21 months since the free service was launched in London and now New York, [Joshua] Browder says DoNotPay has taken on 250,000 cases and won 160,000, giving it a success rate of 64% appealing over $4m of parking tickets.

Browder is working on three other applications of his chatbot lawyer: one that helps people get compensated for flight delays, another that helps people with HIV positive exercise their rights, and another that helps refugees deal with foreign legal systems. Read the rest

Mamadou Barry, 47, racked up two parking tickets in New York while sitting in his car. He was dead at time. "Officials said they were investigating why wardens had failed to give Mr. Barry a third ticket," reports Biebuzz.

Image: Shutterstock Read the rest