A patrol officer made an unsettling discovery at Bricker Park in Texas this morning when he saw that a statue dedicated to Martin Luther King JR had been vandalized during his routine check up. The officer took photos of the vandalism and contacted the local Fire Department to clean the monument.
The MLK statue in the historically black community of Sunnyside was found smeared with white paint early Thursday morning.
An official investigation has been launched and police are treating this criminal mischief. No official statement has been released by authorities as of yet.
This during a time of take-downs and vandalism of several of our countries monuments with a real focus on Confederate-based memorials.
And now a statue of Christopher Columbus also in Houston, Texas has been vandalized. The towering statue of Christopher Columbus in the Montrose area was doused with red paint sometime Thursday night, Houston police officials said Friday.
The reports mark the first known acts of vandalism in Houston on historic statues during a week in which protesters are demanding the removal of Confederate memorials in Houston and across the nation.
The Houston Police Department is investigating both incidents, but no one had been arrested as of Friday afternoon. Officials wouldn’t say whether they believed the attacks were linked.
“We’re going to try to catch people in the act so we can arrest them because there’s no excuse for vandalism,” Chief Art Acevedo said.
All of this is incredible ridiculous. These are monuments to remind us where we came from and where we need to be heading. Taking them outside of that sort of context leads to… well to THIS. This and the Charlottesville crap.
Men like General Robert E. Lee remind us of loyalty.
Men like Martin Luther King JR remind us that we’re all human, that we all bleed red blood.
Men like Christopher Columbus remind us that some of the greatest discovers can happen purely by chance.
It’s insane that these monuments are being treated like this.
