Davis Citizens Concerned As More Signs Of Hate Crime Appear

DAVIS (CBS13) - Another message of hate is being investigated as a crime. It's the second incident in less than a week that's causing concern in the community.

"Oh that's disturbing, very disturbing, I'm Jewish too," said resident Cecilia Escamilla-Greenwald.

A swastika and the n-word were spray painted on a bike trail underneath Interstate 80; an area known for graffiti is now the center of another possible hate crime.

"We don't' know when this exactly took place," said Lt. Paul Doroshov, Davis Police.

This comes after a very visible and large noose was hung from the Davis Senior High School football goal post on Friday morning.

However, officials don't believe the two are connected.

"We don't have any evidence suggesting this, at this point, but we are going to investigate the graffiti and explore measures that we can do to prevent that from happening again in that area," said Doroshov.

So as a result, activists and community leaders put together a meeting on Wednesday to discuss the growing concern of hate crimes.

"It's meant to leave a message; this is an organized individual or a group of individuals. This is not an accident," said resident Tim Malone.

"I was terrified and hopefully a lot of other people are too," said resident Teresa Delgadillo.

After two messages of hate in just a matter of days, leaders are hoping to send a strong message back, this won't be tolerated.

"We're concerned; we really do want it to stop. This is 2012; it is still unbelievable that people are doing things like this anywhere in the United States," said Malone.

The people who attended Wednesday's meeting are making it very clear that it's important to have more meetings like this to try and help curb this type of behavior in the future.