Tuesday morning, several residents in Brownwood woke to find damage to their property in the form of spray painted graffiti. To make the offense worse, some of it was threatening and racially biased.
Brownwood Police received multiple reports regarding property damage to residential and commercial properties due to graffiti. Several reports of residential damage were concentrated in an area between Coggin Park and Brownwood High School.
Police reports state that several features were painted with graffiti in Coggin Park, which included the highest tower of the playground, the back of the Coggin Park sign, and the floor of one of the pavilions.
A short distance from the park, a family is renovating a home in the 2200 block of 1st Street. On Tuesday morning, they also found graffiti with the words “This world is ours to destroy,” an explicative directed toward the Brownwood PD, and a swastika that was painted on their brick privacy fence.
“We weren’t going to have to paint the fence. This adds another $1500 (to the remodeling),” stated homeowner Shane Parker.
Brownwood Police were also called to the 2000 block of 4th Street Tuesday morning where a family woke to find the words “White Power” along with an illegible set of other light green initials that were painted beside this in an area about 3 feet by 6 feet.
Big Country Ford was also hit hard with spray paint graffiti damaging several vehicles.
“They used orange spray paint on twelve cars and one motor home,” said General Manager Mauri Peyton.
The concrete on a patio at the dealership also had a name along with a backward swastika written in the orange paint.
Staff at Big Country Ford quickly removed the graffiti; however, some of the cars did have some damage that could not be completely cleaned up.
“We got off most of the paint, but some parts will have to be ordered, mainly the plastic parts,” said Peyton.
Assistant Brownwood Police Chief James Fuller says they take these cases that contain hateful messages very seriously and continue to do everything they can to prevent these crimes from happening in the area.
“The neighborhood itself is a multiracial neighborhood, a medium income neighborhood. Everyone around there is basically working class people who are trying to live their lives and enjoy their property, and ultimately the problem we have with this situation is that the homeowners are left having to clean up this mess,” said Fuller regarding the residential area that was vandalized.
All of these incidents are under investigation and no arrests have been made at the time of the reports. Police have not yet commented if all of the incidents are related.
Photos show graffiti damage at Coggin Park and to several nearby residential properties.
