Talk About It Tuesday: KKK Hate Messages Spray-Painted Around Miami Gardens

This article is shared from the Miami New Times article that was published on February 19, 2015.  This type of behavior is deeply worrisome and problem that effects all community residents!

One of five sites around Miami Gardens hit with hateful graffiti yesterday.

One of five sites around Miami Gardens hit with hateful graffiti yesterday.

Miami Gardens, the city that’s home to Sun Life Stadium and one of Florida’s highest crime rates, has had a wrenchingly difficult week. Days after police fatally shot a mentally ill man armed with a broom, city leaders are now dealing with an apparent hate crime.

Yesterday, someone spray-painted “KKK” symbols — along with phrases like “move out” — around Miami Gardens. City leaders and civil rights activists this morning are calling for justice.

See also: Internet Won’t Let Lavall Hall, Mentally Ill Man Shot by Miami Gardens Police, Be Forgotten

“We condemn this vandalism,” Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Florida Regional Director Hava Holzhauer said in statement to New Times. “We urge law enforcement to investigate this as a potential hate crime, as well as for all members of the community to publicly denounce this hateful vandalism.”

The graffiti was found in at least five locations around Miami Gardens, a predominantly African-American city.

Miami Gardens Police Chief Stephen Johnson told reporters that the department is treating the graffiti as a grave crime. “Prank or no prank, we are going to be treating this very seriously,” he told the media.

A police spokesman told New Times this morning that no new information has emerged in the case.

The ADL, though, says that whoever left the graffiti had one goal in mind: intimidating residents in their own homes.

“[It was likely] someone within the community who seeks to instill fear in a particular group with the intent of pushing them out of the neighborhood,” Holzhauer says.

The crime comes as Johnson scrambles to deal with outrage over Monday’s shooting of Lavall Hall, a schizophrenic man whose mother had called police for help during an episode. Hall was shot and killed when he used a broom handle to attack two officers.

Anti-police-violence activists have seized on the death as the latest in the #BlackLivesMatter campaign on Twitter and Facebook, while Johnson has been quick to defend the officers involved.

Share: