Vandals with racist messages have struck another Howard County town. Residents in the River Hill area of Clarksville reported 25 cases of vandalism to Howard County police Wednesday, including five cases that police have categorized as “hate bias incidents.”
Police are offering a $500 reward for information about the crimes.
“It concerns me when there?s racism and hatred in our community,” state and county NAACP President Jenkins Odoms Jr. said.
Investigators said they believe the incidents are linked and were committed overnight Tuesday.
Police received multiple phone calls Wednesday from residents reporting spray-painted signs, mailboxes, cars and houses, broken car windows, slashed tires and other property crimes.
Many of the spray-painted drawings and phrases were racial or anti-Semitic in nature, police said.
Six vehicles and two signs were spray-painted with racist vandalism, including swastikas. The incidents come on the heels of a series of hate crimes in Ellicott City in June.
In those incidents, police discovered eight instances of white supremacist graffiti that included swastikas and the worlds “White Power” chemically burned into the lawns of Ellicott City houses
Police have offered a $1,500 reward for information about those crimes. Investigators said they?re not sure if the Ellicott City and Clarksville events are related.
“They don?t appear to be connected,” said police spokeswoman Pfc. Jennifer Reidy. “But we?re not ruling anything out.”
Howard County police define a hate crime as a crime motivated by a person?s race, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation.
