A Sherman Oaks man has been arrested for defacing the Valley district field office of L.A. City Councilman Jack Weiss early Thursday morning with three swastikas and two incoherent messages, glued to the glass entrance door with epoxy.
Police arrested Adonis A. Irwin, 32, at about 8:30 a.m. Friday in the 4600 block of Natick Avenue, the L.A. Times reported.
Weiss, a Jewish legislator representing a heavily Jewish district, declared Thursday, at a press conference outside his vandalized office, that the perpetrator had sought to convey “a message of intimidation and hate, but neither my staff nor I will be intimidated.”
Weiss said he was in an early morning meeting at the Israeli consulate Thursday when he took a call on his cell phone from LAPD Chief William Bratton about the incident.
The two printed messages were interspersed with “Mein Fuehrer,” “Heil Weiss” and incorrect German words and expressed such sentiments as “We’ll have a homoerotic cop feeling up your Jewish ass.”
LAPD Capt. Jim Miller of the Van Nuys district declined to speculate Thursday whether the perpetrator might be mentally unstable.
Representatives of such Jewish organizations as the Anti-Defamation League, Simon Wiesenthal Center, American Jewish Congress and The Israel Institute participated in Thurday’s news conference and expressed the outrage of the Jewish community.
ADL circulated a statement that while anti-Semitic incidents in the United States and California declined in 2006 over 2005, their level is “Still disturbingly high.”
— Tom Tugend, Contributing Editor and Staff Report
