By John McCallum
Managing Editor 

Hate crime or stupidity?

 

Last updated 12/18/2019 at 9:05am



CHENEY – It was the last thing Linda Alvarado expected to see in the cold, frosty air of a Tuesday, Dec. 10 morning.

While walking her dogs a little after 7, the Garden Manor Apartment resident rounded the corner onto Buena Vista Street and saw an ugly scene. A silver, Subaru Outback sat on the street with the front and back windshields smashed along with drawings of male genitalia covering the exterior.

But it was what was spray-painted on two spots on the vehicle that left Alvarado breathless.

“The biggest shocker was the ‘N’ word sprayed across doors,” Alvarado said.

The grandmother said she called police to report the incident, and thought about the three black families living in separate apartments on that end of the complex. The vehicle was parked just outside the front door of one of the families’ apartments, so Alvarado said she knocked on their door to find out if it was their car.


It wasn’t, but it left the Pendleton, Ore.-native wondering about the impact such an incident might have upon the couples’ children. Alvarado said her mother was Mexican-American and her father was Irish, and that she had to endure racist language while growing up in Eastern Oregon in the 1950s and 1960s.

“To walk around the corner and see that, it’s just a shock to me,” she said.

Cheney Police Sgt. Nate Conley said they responded to the call around 7:24 a.m., noting the report stated the windshields were apparently damaged by large rocks found at the scene. Investigators located the owner of the Subaru — who turned out to be white — later in the morning and completed the report.


Conley said the department had reports of “numerous vehicles throughout the city damaged overnight.” The common thread linking them, was all had broken mirrors, windows and tail lights. He wasn’t sure at first if Buena Vista was related.

The incident is the third case in just over a year of an alleged racist event in the city. In April, a 26-year-old man was arrested at the Dollar Tree store after he began “mean mugging” a young, black couple with suspicious looks before approaching them at the checkout counter where he yelled obscenities and racial slurs at them prior to assaulting the man.

In October 2018, police were advised of individuals going about the city posting “Identity Evropa” stickers on the backs of stops signs – including several near Eastern Washington University.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Identity Evropa “is at the forefront of the racist ‘alt-right’s’ effort to recruit white, college-aged men and transform them into the fashionable new face of white nationalism. Rather than denigrating people of color, the campus-based organization focuses on raising white racial consciousness, building community based on shared racial identity and intellectualizing white supremacist ideology.”

Alvarado said a neighbor told her the Buena Vista incident was likely a case of “college kids just being college kids.”

“I said, ‘well you know this is a federal hate crime,” Alvarado said she told her neighbor, who expressed surprise at the designation.

“I hope it’s not college kids,” she added. “I hope it’s not somebody from Cheney.”

According to Wikipedia, “Hate crime laws in the United States are state and federal laws intended to protect against hate crimes (also known as bias crimes) motivated by enmity or animus against a protected class of persons.”

Conley said later on Tuesday that after checking with patrol officers it didn’t appear the incident at Buena Vista was related to the other malicious-mischief damaged vehicles — which totaled 16 incidents. There also wasn’t enough evidence to label the spray-painting a hate crime.

“So for the one with graffiti, it was either random or they missed their target,” he said.

John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.

Author Bio

John McCallum, Retired editor

John McCallum is an award-winning journalist who retired from Cheney Free Press after more than 20 years. He received 10 Washington Newspaper Publisher Association awards for journalism and photography, including first place awards for Best Investigative, Best News and back-to-back awards in Best Breaking News categories.

 

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