Brickbats: October 2025
News of politicians, police, and bureaucrats behaving badly from around the world
Home security video revealed a babysitter funded by the New York City Administration for Children's Services abusing three boys in her care—brothers aged 2, 4, and 6 years. The video showed La'keysha Jackson beating the boys with belts and hangers, throwing the youngest, and using a Halloween mask to scare them. Jackson was apparently the family's second city-funded sitter; the first was fired after she was found to be drinking and smoking at the playground while watching the kids.
Christina Broadway of Marietta, Georgia, was at a funeral when a city employee entered her home without permission. She only found out because her security cameras caught the intrusion. City officials say he was a code enforcement officer who had a right to enter the home because he thought he saw construction taking place without the proper permits.
Three members of the Montana National Guard were charged with criminal trespassing after they landed a Black Hawk helicopter on private ranch land without permission and stole elk antlers. The haul reportedly included two antler sheds and a skeletonized head, valued at a combined $300 to $400.
For four years, Oakland residents complained to the city about dangerous late-night sideshows with cars doing stunts in the area. Finally, they built their own speed bumps, which cost $3,000 and stopped the sideshows for eight months. But the Oakland Department of Transportation removed the speed bumps for lacking official approval. While city officials say they're working on solutions, residents say the dangerous stunts have returned.
Mark Brave, formerly the sheriff of Strafford County, New Hampshire, was sentenced to three and a half to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to perjury, theft, and falsifying evidence. Brave spent $19,000 in county funds on travel and accommodations to conduct extramarital affairs. He will have to pay the money back as part of his sentence.
In England, Sussex Police fired Seren Sriganesh after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and several fraud-related offenses. Sriganesh falsely blamed his parents for three driving offenses he committed and accessed police databases to view details of one of the cases. He received 38 months in prison.
Kenneth and Mildred Bordeaux, an octogenarian couple in Lauderdale Lakes, Florida, face $366,000 in fines for six minor code violations on their duplex. The fines stem from issues like a broken window handle and cracked outlet covers, which they quickly repaired after city inspections in March 2024. Despite their prompt fixes, the city took over 220 days to verify the repairs, causing daily fines to pile up. Their lawyer argues the excessive fines are illegal, and they applied for a reduction, but the city offered only a 10 percent cut, leaving over $300,000 for them to pay.
St. Catherine's Monastery, a 1,600-year-old Greek Orthodox site in the Sinai Peninsula, closed its doors to visitors in protest after an Egyptian court ruled that the monastery's land belongs to the government. The world's oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, St. Catherine's faces an uncertain future as the ruling strips its monks of property ownership.
The International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) suspended three top officers of the Los Angeles Fire Department's labor union after an audit revealed $800,000 in undocumented credit card spending. The audit found that union president Freddy Escobar made 1,957 transactions totaling $311,498 from July 2018 to November 2024, with over 70 percent lacking receipts. The IAFF placed the union under conservatorship to restore financial oversight.
Leisa Streeter, a former administrative assistant for Rock Island County, Illinois, faces seven felony counts for allegedly stealing $900,000 in public funds over 21 years. Authorities claim she opened a fraudulent bank account in 2003 as "Rock Island County VIP" and siphoned city funds into it, averaging about $43,000 annually. County officials only noticed the financial irregularities in her department after she retired in June 2024. After her arrest, local news discovered that when the county first hired her, Streeter was likely still on probation from a previous embezzlement conviction.
