By the Daily Post staff
For the second time in two months, racially-oriented graffiti has been found in a bathroom at El Camino Park, 155 El Camino Real, across from Stanford Shopping Center.
This time a police officer on a routine foot patrol Wednesday discovered that anti-white writings had been etched in a bathroom stall, according to a statement from police.
The writings included “a statement espousing the hatred of white people,” police said.
Police said they are investigating the graffiti as a potential hate crime.
Police have no suspects. The graffiti was done on Tuesday or Wednesday, police said. The city Public Works Department was dispatched to repair the damage.
Similar anti-white graffiti was found by police in May.
Police issued this statement:
“In the wake of recent national events and increased attention on hate crimes, the personnel of the Palo Alto Police Department continue to show their commitment to thoroughly investigate any reported hate crimes in Palo Alto. In late March, the Palo Alto City Council denounced violence directed at people of Asian descent, and that came on the heels of months of efforts with City Council’s ongoing conversations and work on race and equity.”
“You are welcome to read a blog post from the City entitled ‘Steps the Community Can Take to Help Stop Hate Crimes.’ The city of Palo Alto strongly denounces hate crimes of all kinds, and encourages members of our community to promptly report these incidents by calling our 24-hour dispatch center at (650) 329-2413, or 911 if it is an emergency.”
“Police said they are investigating the graffiti as a potential hate crime.” Not only is it not a hate crime, it isn’t even a potential hate crime. For it to be a hate crime there has to be a crime against a person where the perpetrator where the underlying crime was done for reasons of expressed hate. This is a case of graffiti by an anonymous person. Only an under active police department would look for potential crime in such a low level case such as this.