The Arlington County Police Department is asking for the public’s help in investigating dozens of traffic signs vandalized with anti-fascist graffiti.
The wave of vandalism incidents, many of which involve the word “fascism” written under the word “stop,” has been going on for months — at a significant cost to taxpayers, according to local officials.
Arlington County police are investigating “extensive” graffiti, including a racist word, on the roof of Dorothy Hamm Middle School.
Families were informed of the vandalism via email yesterday.
Graffiti resembling a swastika was found Monday at Key Elementary School, according to the school’s principal.
A staff member noticed the swastika-like drawing inside a bathroom stall in the second-grade trailer, Principal Marleny Perdomo said in an email to families last night, shared with ARLnow.
(Updated at 11:35 a.m.) All around Columbia Pike — and increasingly elsewhere in Arlington County — one graffiti message has been popping up: “hate.”
At first, it seemed to be concentrated around a stalled development project on the Pike, but now, the graffiti has been seen farther north in Cherrydale. It appears not to be confined to Arlington, either, as it was spotted earlier this year in Georgetown.
(Updated at 4:15 p.m.) A local park with a popular playground keeps getting vandalized, this time with obscene language and drawings.
As of this article’s publication Rocky Run Park, along N. Barton Street in the Courthouse area, has graffiti featuring anti-police slogans and crude drawings of male genitalia. It’s been there, near the soccer field, since at least Friday.
An Arlington County employee discovered “KKK” scrawled on a pillar in the parking garage below the county government’s Courthouse headquarters last week.
The employee, who is Black, found the message in the garage for the Ellen M. Bozman Government Center (2100 Clarendon Blvd) and reported the incident on Thursday morning to County Board members, County Manager Mark Schwartz, Chief Race and Equity Officer Samia Byrd and the Arlington branch of the NAACP, according to the local NAACP. The employee filed a police report yesterday (Monday).
The latest sign defacement happened outside of St. George’s Episcopal Church, at 915 N. Oakland Street in Virginia Square. Someone spray painted over a sign with a Bible verse and the words “Black Lives Matter.”
Arlington County Police say it happened around lunchtime Monay.
(Updated at 11:45 p.m.) More than 500 people have signed a petition calling for the S. Abingdon Street bridge over I-395 to be renamed “Black Lives Matter Bridge.”
The petition was created amid dueling efforts to place and remove the letters “BLM” on the bridge’s chain link fence, a thus far nonviolent dispute that has resulted in multiple calls to Arlington County police.
“Virginia is for lovers. No KKK.”
The owner of the shed on 19th Road N. had no intention of being at the center of a civil rights message, but the back of his property expresses a message of tolerance to anyone riding the Metro through the East Falls Church station or taking the Washington and Old Dominion Trail.
A county facility that serves people with developmental disabilities was spray painted with “an array of racial and gender slurs” earlier this week.
Staff members at the Woodmont Community Integration Center on the 2400 block of N. Fillmore Street discovered the hateful graffiti all over the building and a vehicle early Tuesday morning. Police were called and are still investigating the incident, an ACPD spokeswoman said.
The vehicles were all parked along the 900 and 1000 blocks of N. Madison Street, a couple of blocks away from McKinley Elementary School.
Only loose change was reported to have been stolen, though one of the vehicles — a truck — was also spray painted. Police described the spray paint as “alleged gang graffiti;” multiple tipsters tell ARLnow it was “MS-13” gang graffiti, though that could not be officially confirmed.
Though his art can be spotted across the globe, artist Mas Paz calls Arlington home.
Mas Paz, whose real name is Federico Frum, describes his work as indigenous contemporary art, using graffiti and standard bucket paint as his media.
