The Las Vegas police have been approaching homeless people with shopping carts and telling them that if they remove any possessions from them, they will be arrested for the theft of a cart. Then, after no one fesses up, they are confiscating the shopping carts and having them, along with their contents, compacted in a garbage truck right in front of the owners' eyes. We're talking about everything these people own -- including clothing, blankets (and Vegas had several inches of snow last night), identification, medication, and other possessions necessary for survival -- being completely destroyed based on an intimidation tactic. Absolutely disgusting, and about as unethical as law enforcement can get while potentially skirting the rules. You can read the Review-Journal article here. (It doesn't mention the compacting, but I've heard secondhand that this occurred to several witnesses.)

This morning, the injunction against the ordinance banning the feeding of the homeless in public parks, filed by the Nevada ACLU, was granted by a district court judge. Yes, that means that you can again go down to a park in Las Vegas, give a sandwich to a homeless person, and not worry about being cited -- at least until the city writes another overly broad ordinance.