Update, Jan. 18, 4:07 p.m.: There was a mistake in the original post about an anti-Catholic hate message sprayed on an Anaheim church wall and racist
hate graffiti sprayed on a wall outside a county office in Santa
Ana. We wrote that the incidents–both discovered on Jan. 11–were apparently unrelated. Now authorities say they believe the same hate sprayers are behind both incidents.
And that they've been at it some more.
]
Asians and African-Americans are threatened with death in black-painted hate speech found early Friday on a sidewalk in front of Pier 1 Imports and on the walls of the Sears Outlet at the Brea Union Plaza on East Imperial Highway.
As reported below, “Kill the Cathlics” was sprayed onto Saint Boniface Catholic Church at 120 N. Janss St., Anaheim, and threatening hate speech against Asians and
African-Americans was scrawled outside the Orange County Housing
Authority at 1170 N. Broadway, Santa Ana. That graffiti was discovered on Jan. 11, and now authorities have disclosed even more hate speech was discovered that day:
- “Kill CATHLick's” was painted in large black letters on a walkway next to the parking lot at St. Thomas More Catholic Parish on Market Place in Irvine.
- Graffiti that called for killing Asians and African-Americans was painted onto the Chase Bank on North Euclid Avenue in Anaheim.
- Racially tinged hate messages were also splashed on a pet clinic and the Furnish 123 store on East La Palma Avenue in Anaheim.
- Racial slurs and threats of violence against blacks and Asians were painted on the 1700 block of North Broadway in Santa Ana.
“It sounds like there is a group of hatemongers who have traveled around the county doing this stuff,” Rusty Kennedy tells The Orange County Register's Denisse Salazar. The longtime executive director of the Orange County Human Relations Commission called the incidents “pretty alarming and unprecedented.”
“We are horrified that there are these groups out there,” Kennedy continued, “and whenever they raise their heads and spew their hate, it sets off alarms.”
Original Post, Jan. 12, 1:14 p.m.: The same day parishioners
discovered an anti-Catholic hate message sprayed on an Anaheim church
wall, racist hate graffiti was discovered on a wall outside a county
office in Santa Ana. The incidents reported Tuesday are apparently
unrelated.
To give an idea of the brainpower behind the defacing
of Saint Boniface Catholic Church, on 120 N. Janss St., Anaheim, the
spelling-challenged tagger(s) sprayed, “Kill the Cathlics.”
Obviously, a product of public schools
Santa Ana Police say they have launched a hate-crime investigation into the “racist and threatening” remarks directed at Asian Americans and African-Americans that were scrawled outside the Orange County Housing Authority, at 1170 N. Broadway, Santa Ana.
Many Asian Americans and African-Americans work in that office, according to police, who believe the vandalism occurred sometime between 5:30 p.m. Monday and 7:30 a.m. Tuesday. Anyone who knows or may have seen something is asked to call the Santa Ana P.D. at (714) 245-8400.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.