A practical joke of stealing campaign signs is no laughing matter to Harford County officials.
“We had several personnel from the Criminal Investigation Division and several people from the Patrol Services Bureau that had to take hours to investigate what eventually came down to a ridiculous crime … a stupid prank,” said Sheriff?s Office spokesman Robert Thomas.
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The Sheriff?s Office has charged four adults and one juvenile in the theft of more than 300 campaign signs during the night of Aug. 15. Charges are pending against three other adults, as soon as the summons can be delivered to them, Thomas said.
The theft of thousands of dollars? worth of signs was apparently part of a bet: The suspects broke into two teams and set out to steal campaign signs, with “points” awarded for the number and size of stolen signs, Thomas said.
The losing team had to buy the winners breakfast, he said.
Signs for candidates of both parties in races for governor, county executive, county council, council president, sheriff and House of Delegates were stolen from along Routes 543, 22 and 155 and Prospect Mill Road.
The signs were then thrown into a community pond in Abingdon?s Stone Ridge Development, damaging the pump for a fountain.
The adults charged included 18-year-olds Gregory Mitchell Coudon and Andrew William Smith, both of Bel Air, and Matthew Overton Kent of Abingdon, and 19-year-old Adam Joseph Devine of Bel Air.
Charges against each included a felony charge theft over $500 and a misdemeanor charge of malicious destruction.
Three other adults are apparently away at college and could not yet have the summons delivered, Thomas said.
Their parents are not able to accept the charges for them because the suspects are adults, so deliveringthe summons could depend upon the suspects turning themselves in or being found at school.
