Not yet charged as a hate crime.
AB Wire
A 20-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of vandalizing the parking lot of a Sikh temple in Orange County, California, over the weekend.
Detectives said the incident could be interpreted as a hate crime, but that determination hasn’t been made, Buena Park police Cpl. Bret Carter, reported the Orange County Register.
Police officers first encountered Brodie Durazo while responding to a vandalism call early Sunday at the Buena Park Manor trailer park in the 7100 block of Orangethorpe Avenue, said Carter.
Durazo, a Buena Park resident, admitted to spraying gang graffiti on a wall, which sits next to the Gurdwara Singh Sabha temple, police said.
He agreed to clean the wall in exchange for park representatives not pressing charges and was not arrested, authorities said.
Around 8 p.m. that evening Gurdwara temple officials at a worship service reported graffiti on their parking lot walls and on a commercial truck that had the vulgar phrase about the ISIS terror group, the Register report said.
Temple officials and members thought the incident was a possible backlash for the San Bernardino shooting in which a Muslim husband and wife killed 14 and injured 22 people.
Upon review of the markings, investigators realized it looked identical to the writing found earlier at the trailer park.
“It was the same exact thing and the same exact colors,” Carter said.
On Wednesday, Durazo confessed to the vandalism at the parking lot and and on the truck that same morning. He was arrested on suspicion of vandalism at a place of worship.
Carter would not say if Durazo knew Sikhs are not Muslims or what his intentions were when he sprayed both properties.
The temple has not had any other acts of vandalism or threats, said Gurdwara President Inderjot Singh.
“We are kind of relieved that they made an arrest,” Singh said. “We are very thankful.”
The case will be handed to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office on Monday, Carter said.
Earlier, ABC reported the Sikh Coalition said a member’s truck in a parking lot also was targeted by someone who misspelled the word “Islam” and made an obscene reference to ISIS.
The Sikh Coalition says it has repeatedly been faced with hate crimes and discrimination since the 9/11 attack.
The Los Angeles Times reported the Sikh Coalition releasing this statement:
“We believe that the Gurdwara Singh Sabha was vandalized because it is a Sikh house of worship,” the coalition’s attorney Gurjot Kaur said in a statement. “We call on local and federal agencies to investigate this vandalism as a hate crime and request increased law enforcement security at the gurdwara immediately.”
A gang based in East Buena Park had scrawled its insignia on the back of the temple – graffiti commonly seen throughout the city, Carter said. There was no indication the graffiti was a hate crime, reported the Times.
Kaur said the police don’t always recognize bias, adding that this episode showed signs of hate.
The driver of the vandalized truck, she said, was staying overnight at the temple. He is believed to be from Texas, but he had not been identified, Kaur said.
The Sikh community is often targeted because of their dress and grooming, she said.
“These are hateful slurs often targeted at Sikhs,” Kaur said.
In the wake of the shooting rampage in San Bernardino, the Sikh community is fearful of assaults on their members.
In 2012, six Sikh worshipers were killed when a neo-Nazi walked into a temple in Oak Creek, Wis., and opened fire.
“I am thankful for law enforcement’s attention to this investigation,” the temple’s President Inderjot Singh said, to the Times. “However, I believe this crime must be investigated as a hate crime to ensure that we do not ignore the patterns of intolerance and violence that Sikhs and other minority communities continue to face.”