Lacey Police looking for suspect who removed school’s BLM sign, left hate group stickers
Lacey Police are asking for the public’s help finding a man suspected of vandalizing a Black Lives Matter message at a local elementary school and leaving stickers promoting a hate group in its place.
The vandalism was reported the afternoon of July 9, according to a Lacey Police Department press release. Someone had pulled down streamers spelling out “Black Lives Matter” on the fence at Lakes Elementary School on Mullen Road Southeast, and small stickers promoting the group Patriot Front were put in their place.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, Patriot Front espouses racism, antisemitism, and intolerance, and its members “maintain that their ancestors conquered America and bequeathed it solely to them.” Southern Poverty Law Center describes the group as a “white nationalist hate group.”
Video surveillance footage shows a suspect police describe as likely a younger male who’s wearing shoes that look like Vans, pants, a sweatshirt, a hat, and a face mask.
North Thurston Public Schools condemned the vandalism in a press release last week.
“Our district supports Black Lives Matter and we are committed to ongoing action to dismantle systemic racism and to address anti-Black ideologies throughout our district,” Superintendent Debra Clemens said in a prepared statement. “We will not tolerate people defacing our property or promoting hate speech. It is unacceptable.”
This isn’t the first time a Black Lives Matter message has been removed from school property. Someone on a motorcycle removed the word “Black” from a sign at Nisqually Middle School, leaving the words “Lives Matter,” the NTPS press release reads, and two BLM signs were mistakenly removed by maintenance staff at Lakes and Nisqually.
As The Olympian previously reported, a coalition of groups within the district is calling on NTPS to be more transparent about what led the district’s Director of Facilities to remove the sign at Lakes in June.
Anyone with information regarding the most recent incident at Lakes should call Crime Stoppers of South Sound at 1-800-222-TIPS.
This story was originally published July 16, 2020 at 9:56 AM.
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