Quick Take
Santa Cruz police say they are “pretty confident” they have identified the vandal who threw blue paint across the downtown Black Lives Matter mural in July, and hope to make an arrest within a few weeks.
Police say they’re getting close to arresting a suspect in the second vandalism of the Black Lives Matter mural in front of Santa Cruz City Hall.
In late July, someone splattered blue paint across the letters A and C of the mural. The vandalism happened just over a month after community members gathered to repaint the mural after two men did burnouts over the paint in 2021. A few days later, the Santa Cruz Police Department released security camera stills of the suspect — a white man wearing a light blue shirt, khaki or white shorts, white slip-on sandals and a paper mask on his face.
Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Jon Bush said the department was able to identify a suspect through surveillance footage and “assistance of the public.” He said SCPD hopes to make an arrest within a few weeks and that the department is “pretty confident” it has the right guy.
“We served some search warrants in regards to this case to further solidify evidence and support, hopefully, a prosecutable case,” he said. “We’re still waiting on some of that forensic evidence to come back because we want to make sure that we put forth a solid case for prosecution for the district attorney’s office.”
Bush said the SCPD is looking into the suspect’s social media and personal electronics to further bolster the case — and determine whether the vandalism can be considered a hate crime.
“Almost all cases nowadays, we look into stuff they’ve stored on people’s phones, computers, and their search histories,” he said. “That’s where we really learn a lot about a person and their motive.”
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