#64: MAPLE LEAF MENACE 🍁

🇺🇸 FOREIGN AFFAIRS - Canadian woman arrested by ICE for slapping teen girl wearing Trump shirt at Jersey Shore

📱 TECH - Toronto lawyer’s license suspended for using AI-hallucinated case law in court

🚓 CRIME - Ajax man accused of breaking curfew, sexually assaulting woman at beach park

We’re hiring!

Open positions include:

• Correspondent in Uranium City, SK.

• Street artist anywhere in Canada.

• Freelance photographer anywhere in Canada with an eye for small-town graffiti and other signs of urban/rural decay.

Now please keep in mind……..

Smalltown Graffiti is ~completely user-funded, which is great but also means we’re strapped for cash.

So I can’t afford to pay much for photos, stories, art, etc.

But if you’re a hobby artist and enjoy tagging / taking the sort of pictures you think we’d like, then I would happily pay you $5-$10/picture for the rights to publish them.

You would, of course, receive full credits for the photo(s).

Gimme a shout if you’re interested (best way to reach me is by replying to these emails).

Enjoy today’s stories.

-Peter

⌛️ Today’s read is 3 minutes long.

A Canadian woman has been arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after allegedly slapping a teenage girl wearing pro-Trump paraphernalia in New Jersey.

33-year-old Kaitlyn Tracey approached the teen and her three friends on a boardwalk at Jersey Shore on July 3 while recording them with her phone, according to court documents reported by NJ.com.

Tracey reportedly took issue with the teen’s sweatpants, which bore the words “Trump” and “ICE” on its rear.

Tracey allegedly yelled at the kids, then slapped the teen across her face.

Police arrived on the scene shortly after. They told Tracey to leave the boardwalk, but did not charge her.

On July 13, Tracey turned herself over to police after they obtained a warrant for her arrest based on footage of the incident captured by surveillance cameras.

She was charged with endangering the welfare of a child, simple assault, harassment, and obstruction.

Since Tracey is a Canadian citizen with an expired visa, police turned her over to ICE.

She awaits her Aug. 4 court date in an ICE detainment facility.

Matthew Geroni, Tracey’s American husband, is pleading on TikTok for his wife to be set free.

“My main goal is the safety and well-being of my wife, and that is about it,” Geroni said.

He has since made his TikTok page private after allegedly receiving death threats.

He also launched a GoFundMe page to help cover his wife’s legal expenses, but the page was shut down after online pushback.

Geroni alleges that his wife was hit before she hit back. He says the video of Tracey’s alleged assault that has been posted by US government accounts only shows her response to first being attacked.

Geroni was referring to a Twitter video posted on July 16 by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, captioned, “MAPLE LEAF MENACE. This illegal alien who assaulted a teenager has no business being in our country.”

ICE reposted the video hours later with the caption, “Kaitlyn, it’s time to go home, eh? 🍁”

A Toronto lawyer’s license has been suspended for 6 months after presenting AI-hallucinated case law in court and then lying about it when questioned later.

According to an order released by the Law Society Tribunal, Mary Hyun-Sook Lee (also known as Jisuh Lee) “failed to serve her client” and “misled a court” by presenting “non-existent or irrelevant case law” that had been generated by ChatGPT.

The Tribunal then says Lee “failed to act with honour and integrity” by “being dishonest” when the Tribunal later questioned her about her use of AI.

She is barred from practicing law until January 2027 and must pay the Tribunal a $10,000 fine.

An Ajax man has been accused of breaking his house-arrest curfew and sexually assaulting a woman at a Whitby beach park.

33-year-old Dwayne Horace Daley allegedly broke curfew around 10 PM on July 13 — a Monday night.

He went to Iroquois Beach Park and was walking along the sand path that runs north-west toward Gordon Street when he came across a woman.

Police say Daley forced her “off the path into a tree line where he made threats and sexually assaulted her.”

Police searched for Daley for 3 days before arresting him in Whitby on July 16.

He was charged with sexual sssault, uttering threats, robbery, and four counts of failure to comply with a release order.

He was held for a bail hearing.