During a press convention held this afternoon, Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony mentioned that his company had arrested three 16-year-old Weston residents on legal mischief and felony housebreaking prices after they confessed to vandalizing a residential neighborhood with anti-Semitic and racist slurs. Two of the youngsters obtained hate crime enhancements to their prices.Â
While Tony declined to reveal the names of the suspects, given that they are minors, he promised to analyze and cost anybody who terrorizes the neighborhood, no matter their age.
“Anytime there is a menace in direction of our faculty, or any element on this neighborhood, we will examine completely and cost you accordingly,” Tony mentioned. “I can care much less if you’re 14,15, 16, 38, or 75.”
The arrests come almost two months after the primary incident on October 5, wherein residents of the Weston Hills neighborhood within the City of Weston awoke on the Jewish vacation Yom Kippur to seek out anti-Semitic and racial slurs in graffiti. Scrawled throughout sidewalks and bogs within the manicured neighborhood in Broward County’s westernmost metropolis have been massive swastikas and the phrase “kill Jews.”
Weeks later, on October 25, bigoted messages once more confirmed up across the bogs.
Then, on October 30, it occurred once more, when almost similar graffiti was discovered on entrance indicators and round a youngsters’s playground within the Hunters Pointe subdivision of the identical neighborhood.
Following the latest incident, Crime Stoppers provided a $5,000 reward for data resulting in an arrest, which was raised to $15,000 after the owners affiliation pitched in. A truck with a vibrant, LED display screen promoting the Crime Stoppers reward could possibly be seen on many days driving across the neighborhood.
Tony says he does not imagine the arrests have been a results of a Crime Stoppers tip. Instead, he attributes the success of the Broward Sheriff’s Office investigation partially to “old-school surveillance,” what he describes as officers “hunkered down” in components of the neighborhood.
The youngsters accountable expressed a way of regret and remorse for the incidents to investigators, saying that the vandalism was purported to be a joke, Tony mentioned.
But Tony instructed reporters, “This just isn’t a laughing matter.”
“Parents, as I instructed you,” Tony mentioned, “educate your youngsters on the significance of not participating at school threats. It’s not a joke.”
The incidents come amid an alarming rise of anti-Semitism throughout the nation. Florida, specifically, has seen an “alarming rise” in extremist exercise pushed by on-line misinformation and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, in response to a report launched in September by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
According to the report, “Hate within the Sunshine State: Extremism and Antisemitism in Florida,” the variety of anti-Semitic incidents documented by the ADL in Florida rose to 190 in 2021, a 50 p.c year-over-year improve.