Ed note: Images accompanying this story on A3 include potentially offensive language, and an image of a swastika that The 69蹤獲 has blurred.
JANESVILLE City of Janesville public works crews are cleaning up hate graffiti that appears to target Israel and Jewish people after vandals tagged multiple city park spaces and bridges over the weekend with a slew of anti-semitic, spray-painted messages.
A city public works division supervisor says vandals have returned at least once since Saturday to Lustig Park on the citys south side to spray paint swastikas and antisemitic internet memes on parking barriers and a restroom at the park.
Parks and Recreation Operations Director Cullen Slapak says crews keep returning to paint over that graffiti but vandals keep coming back to tag the same spots over and over.
We painted at Lustig twice. Saturday, and then we came back today (Monday) and saw more, Slapak said.
Monday, there was more spray-painted, antisemitic graffiti on parking barriers. Some had black spray paint that reads F --- ISRAEL, while another reads HOLOHOAX an internet reference to the Holocaust, during which approximately 6 million European Jews were murdered by the Nazis during World War II, supposedly being a hoax.
A third graffiti tag on the outer wall of Lustigs restrooms contained another antisemitic internet meme about sexual assault and Jewish marital rules that the vandal falsely claims to be text from the Talmud, the Hebrew Bible.
One Janesville resident, a retired English Literature teacher named Sherrie, says she saw the graffiti while walking her dog. She called the citys parks department to report it.
Its disturbing to say the least, Sherrie said. Theres been so many incidents against Jewish people recently. That just furthers the hostility to see people putting things like that in public places.
Sherrie asked The 69蹤獲 to withold her full name because she said shes worried whoever did the spray-paint vandalism could retaliate against her.
Another resident, a woman name Joette, was parked in a vehicle at Lustig. Shed pulled up to the park for a picnic with her grandchildren, and confronted the spray-paint graffiti.
There was profanity, racism, and swastikas all in black paint.
Its just a horrible situation to see that, she said. Especially when Im with the kids, the grandbabies.
Slapak said its difficult, and can be time-consuming to remove spray-painted graffiti.
Slapak said graffiti vandalism at parks is nearly constant, but its not often the city has to clean up racist and anti-religious tagging in public spaces.
Its a rarity, even as antisemitism has moved into the mainstream the last few years, in part as a reaction to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
That makes the vandalism over the weekend more glaring. On top of the vandalism and the overt messages it contained, Slapak says people keep returning to re-paint messages as the city works to clean it up.
Slapak said city parks staff have reported the damage to the Janesville Police Department as a potential hate crime.
This stuff we forwarded to this morning. When its racially motivated, we make sure its forwarded to PD. If we start seeing an uptick in graffiti, we let PD know. They track that, Slapak said.
Slapak said police did arrest one person over a rash of vandalism downtown in recent months that involved spray-paint vandalism of garbage cans and park benches.
Slapak characterized that vandalism as hieroglyphics, although he was not sure what greater message the person arrested was trying to convey.
The vandalism left over the weekend also showed up at an underpass on East Milwaukee Street, and under the Center Avenue bridge, adjacent to bike paths.
Broad swaths of downtown are covered by security cameras, some private, which could make vandalism there easier to investigate.
Sherrie, the woman who reported Lustigs vandalism, said she wonders if the city could place some more security features at parks, too.
Maybe more lights, she said. I just think of a couple of Jewish people I knew, if they are still living, if they walked by and saw what I saw色