City Slow to Remove Racial Slur on Sign in North Park

On June 2, when I saw a stop sign at Louisiana Street and Polk Avenue tagged with anti-semitic graffiti, I immediately emailed councilmember Todd Gloria's office. I also sent a photo showing the racial slur, which spelled out “JEW.”

M. Vanessa Jackson, executive administrative assistant to Gloria, responded quickly with this email: “I have forwarded this information to the appropriate person.”

A few days went by with no cleanup, so I followed up on June 7. Jackson responded: "I am sorry to hear that the graffiti has not been removed yet. San Diego is a very big city with many issues so it’s difficult to get to everything right away. I did forward your first email to our North Park representative, Anthony Bernal.”

Bernal emailed back June 7: “I submitted this to Streets Division and they will address. Please notify me if it is still up by next Monday.”

On June 10, I contacted a North Park friend who has done volunteer graffiti removal in North Park for many months. He came over June 11 and cleaned the graffiti off the stop sign.