John Street Defeated In Worst Mayor Contest

Last September, my newspaper reported that on August 26, 2006, Jackson, Mississippi Mayor Frank Melton had taken an entourage of police officers and teenagers (some with criminal records) to a duplex in a poor neighborhood. Stating that the duplex was home to drug dealers, Mayor Melton then directed the odd mix of cops and teenagers to destroy the house with sledgehammers.

The Worst Mayor in America [Reason]

N.J. Teens Imitate Art

Six young teenagers apparently read The Destructors in English class and took its message of fighting against your capitalist oppressors to heart. And so they did what the book told them to: They destroyed a house from the inside.

The boys apparently skipped school for this field trip and were “bored,” so they decided to head into the empty, just-purchased-by-a-cop house and tore the place apart. The kids were between 11 and 14 and totally love Graham Green’s seminal short story. Their names aren’t being released, but we can assume they’re someting like T. and Blackie.

The Ocean County shore home — in Barnegat Township, N.J. — has $35k-to-$40k worth of damage and the parents could face some sort of charges as well once the township police figure out what to charge them with. The kids tore apart the house with baseball bats, metal pipes, axes and “their own hands,” according to NBC 10.

A neighbor, Mary Kitzler, blamed — who else — a lack of adult supervision:

“I blame the parents,” Kitzler said. “They’re afraid to take control of their kids, in my mind.”

Yeah, I’d be afraid to control my kids if they were armed with baseball bats and axes, too, y’know.

The Destructors
Kids Destroy Shore House With Baseball Bats [NBC 10]