Three spray-painted swastikas were discovered over the weekend at Dos Vientos Community Park in the Conejo Valley — two on the wooden boards on the perimeter of a baseball field, and one on the concrete next to it, according to Cyndi Silverman, regional director of the Santa Barbara/Tri-Counties Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
Residents of the area discovered the graffiti at the Newbury Park site and notified authorities on Saturday, according to Steve Gold, a congregant of Congregation Am Hayam in Ventura County. It has since been removed.
The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department could not be reached immediately for comment, but the Ventura County Star reported that the incident is not being investigated as a hate crime but rather as a misdemeanor vandalism incident.
“We called it into the police department to have them investigate it, which they did, and it wasn’t registered as a hate crime, because it was not addressed to anyone in particular,” Gold told the Journal.
Gold said he was surprised to find the swastikas in his neighborhood in the first place.
“I really think this is just an independent person who probably has anger issues. I don’t feel in my neighborhood polarizations occurring,” he said.
Silverman said the three swastikas discovered at the park were only the latest incidents she has seen in the area. She declined to draw a correlation between the uptick and the election of President Donald Trump.
It’s “definitely a concern, seeing an uptick in hate symbols, especially in public parks,” she said.
Ed Jones, a member of the Conejo Recreation and Park District board of directors, wrote on his Facebook page, “Such a shame that this symbol of hate would appear in one of our parks.”
The incident followed a mid-December instance of an anti-Semitic scrawl discovered in West Los Angeles, near Temple Isaiah. The phrase, “Why is Jackie O being played by an Israeli Jew?” — a reference to Israeli-American actress Natalie Portman’s portrayal of Jackie Kennedy in the recent film, “Jackie” — was discovered at a bus stop on a poster of the film “Assassin’s Creed.” A slashed-through Jewish star appears next to the scrawl.
Los Angeles’ ADL Associate Regional Director Ariella Schusterman said the West L.A. incident was “taken care of pretty quickly.”
Both incidents were documented via the neighborhood-centric social network app Nextdoor, which provides a platform for residents to describe positive and negative activity in their respective neighborhoods.
In separate interviews, Schusterman and Silverman said they appreciated people using Nextdoor to document instances of hate but also reminded people it is important to inform local law enforcement agencies and report them to the ADL, which compiles a record of reported hate incidents and crimes.
“Obviously we want people to call us when we have anti-Semitic incidents or crimes,” Schusterman said, “or to call the police.”
