Social Inactivist
A suicidal man complained after he called an emergency helpline and
was transferred to a Church of Sweden pastor, who fell asleep while
listening to him. “I thought maybe he was taking notes, so I asked, ‘Are
you taking notes?’ I could hear his heavy breathing before he woke up,”
the 44-year-old man told the Barometern newspaper. The pastor
wasn’t awake long, and after another five minutes with no answer, the
caller hung up. He tried calling back but was placed on hold and hung up
after 10 minutes. Monika Eckerdal Kjellstrom, who coordinates duty
pastors for the Church of Sweden, expressed regret but noted this wasn’t
an isolated incident. “This sort of thing should really not occur,” she
said, “but it does sometimes happen that people call and report that
the pastors have fallen asleep.” (Sweden’s The Local)
Too Big to Prosecute
After investigators with Canada’s Bank of Montreal assembled more
than 35,000 documents pertaining to what could be the biggest mortgage
fraud in Canadian history, government authorities told the bank they
weren’t interested in pursuing a criminal investigation against more
than 300 Albertans, including mortgage brokers, real estate agents,
lawyers and at least one member of parliament, whom the bank accused of
generating $70 million worth of phony mortgages in one year. “There just
aren’t enough police officers to investigate these crimes,” said Chris
Mathers, a corporate crime consultant and former Royal Canadian Mounted
Police officer. “If you double the number of investigators, you will
just have double the number of crimes being investigated and still have a
whole bunch stacked in a pile and waiting to go.” (Canadian
Broadcasting Corp. News)
Little Things Mean a Lot
Authorities arrested Rolando Negrin, 44, a federal security screener
at Miami International Airport, who they said beat up a co-worker with
an expandable police baton. According to the arrest report, Negrin
explained that he endured repeated mocking about the size of his
genitals after his Transportation Security Administration colleagues
observed his private parts on one of the airport’s full-body imaging
machines until “he could not take the jokes any more and lost his mind.”
(The Miami Herald)
