BRICKBATS.

• Author: Oliver, Charles
• Position: Rent control in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and police department of Kansas City, Missouri settlement lawsuit

With a new rent control law taking effect on May 1, many landlords in St. Paul, Minnesota--particularly small landlords and those who rent to low-income people--are raising rents, converting their buildings into condominiums, or selling them altogether. The Pioneer Press reports this is exactly what critics of the measure said would happen. The voter-approved referendum limits rent increases to no more than 3 percent per year and does not allow them to be raised to market rates when an apartment is vacated.

A federal court has awarded Ju'Zema Goldring $1.5 million in a lawsuit Goldring brought against the city of Atlanta and two police officers. In 2015, the two cops stopped Goldring for jaywalking, then arrested her on drug charges, claiming that the contents of a stress ball Goldring had were drugs. Goldring spent six months in jail before prosecutors had the contents tested. The results were negative. Goldring claims the officers had performed field tests that also showed the results were negative, but that the cops had reported them as positive.

For the past three years, members of the Anishinaabe and Potawatomi tribes have held a sugarbush ceremony at the start of maple-tapping season in Detroit's River Rouge Park and shown people how to tap trees and boil sap. They've got a memorandum of understanding with the city to do that, and organizers claim they had the needed permits for this year's ceremony. But more than a dozen cops, some in tactical gear, broke up this year's ceremony shortly after it began, saying members of the tribes were violating city ordinances against entering the park after dark.

The police department of Kansas City, Missouri, has agreed to pay $900,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by Tyree Bell, who was detained for three weeks for a crime he...