Newport Beach police are exploring the tagging of swastikas on a storage locker at Corona del Mar High School as a hate crime, the Newport-Mesa Unified School District claimed.
The school area familiarized the criminal damage last weekend break and reported it to the police.
“This behavior is unacceptable and will not be tolerated in our schools,” claimed Annette Franco, a representative for the area. “We are investigating and have met with the Jewish Federation of Orange County to determine next steps in helping our school community to be better citizens. Immediate action is being taken as we develop longer-term plans.”
An agent for the Newport Beach Police Department claimed investigatives were exploring.
While the event comes much less than 2 weeks after the beginning of the battle in Israel and Gaza, the school area has a history of antisemitic occurrences.
In 2019, police were informed after a team of high school trainees consuming alcohol at a houseparty took a picture offering a Nazi salute around a table with red plastic mugs set up in the form of a swastika.
The trainees at that celebration went to Newport Harbor, Estancia and Costa Mesa senior high schools, not Corona del Mar High School.
Reports of hate occurrences have actually enhanced over the previous couple of years in Orange County, increasing from 41 occurrences in 2021 to 103 in 2022, according to an area record.
Brian Levin, creator of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, claimed there has actually been a rise in antisemitic and anti-Muslim occurrences because the beginning of the battle, though the information is extremely initial.
Levin claimed there were 7 antisemitic hate criminal activities reported in the city of Los Angeles in between Oct. 6 and 16 this year, compared to 3 in the exact same duration in 2014.
“We have seen increases in anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish hate. More of the increases are occurring with noncriminal incidents, and anti-Jewish incidents for now seem to be going up more,” Levin claimed.
