A billboard in Minneapolis originally designed to support law enforcement was vandalized by left-wing extremists to read “shoot our police.”
The billboard was graffitied with communist and anarchist symbols late Monday night and early Tuesday. The anarchist symbol found on the defaced billboard is frequently employed by Antifa. The symbol’s appearance beside the communist hammer and sickle is an apparent reference to the anarcho-communist ideology upheld by many Antifa members.
The vandalized billboard is owned by the Center of the American Experiment, which has had several of its 38 pro-police billboards vandalized since they were put up a week ago. Four signs have been spray painted with vulgar, left-leaning graffiti while another was torn from its board.
“We have more patience than the criminals do. If they keep vandalizing billboards, we will keep replacing them,” John Hinderaker, president of the Center, told Alpha News.
“These people are radical extremists, and the fact that they get a great deal of attention in the press even though they are a tiny minority and the fact that they’re talked about sympathetically by a lot of politicians in Minnesota and around the county is outrageous,” he continued.
Hinderaker said the Center’s polling shows that 85 percent of Minnesotans support their police departments, calling the idea of defunding any police department “radically unpopular.”
The Center says it will pay $10,000 to anybody who provides information leading to the successful arrest and conviction of those who attacked the billboards.
“We are offering $10,000 to anyone who supplies information that leads to the arrest and conviction of some or all of the people who have been vandalizing the billboards,” Hinderaker said.
The Minnesota-based think tank may also install cameras to record future vandals in the act.
“Cameras are cheap nowadays,” he noted. “If they keep vandalizing billboards, sooner or later they’re going to get caught.”
Kyle Hooten
Kyle Hooten is Managing Editor of Alpha News. His coverage of Minneapolis has been featured on television shows like Tucker Carlson Tonight and in print media outlets like the Wall Street Journal.
