No arrests yet in hate-filled vandalism at La Cueva High School, APS says

No one’s been arrested in the vandalism of La Cueva High School, district officials said Thursday, during which someone spray-painted racial slurs and swastikas on the exterior of the Northeast Albuquerque school.

APS police are still investigating the vandalism, Albuquerque Public Schools Chief Operations Officer Gabriella Blakey said, adding that while security cameras at the school did capture the vandals, they were wearing hoodies and their faces were covered.

“It is with great disappointment that I inform you about an ugly, unacceptable, and disturbing act of vandalism we were met with when we arrived on campus this morning,” Principal Dana Lee said in a letter sent to parents Sept. 29. “No one should ever feel uncomfortable, marginalized, or fearful, particularly on a public school campus.”

The vandalism, district Maintenance and Operations Executive Director John Dufay said, was cleaned up within 24 hours.

That’s often the case when there’s graffiti on school property, he said, because the top priority is to paint over it as soon as possible, whether the color matches, to discourage others from similar behavior.

“When they graffiti, they want as many kids to see it or people to see it as possible,” Dufay said, adding that when the district covers the vandalism up immediately, “The kids feel that it’s one of those things that ‘I did all that work, and no one got to see it.’ ”

Between the initial and secondary paint jobs, labor and sandblasting to remove graffiti from sidewalks, cleaning up the vandalism at La Cueva cost the district $22,000, Dufay said.

There are measures in place, such as fencing around the school, to prevent incidents of vandalism, Blakey said. But some of them, to include motion detection systems installed in schools, are geared toward alerting authorities when someone’s inside a building moving around.

“The typical response and prevention is if alarms go off, so this type of vandalism that’s on the outside is harder,” she said. “We rely on the ‘See Something, Say Something’” approach.

When asked about the vandalism at La Cueva, Anti-Defamation League Mountain States Regional Director Scott Levin said Wednesday, it’s a “horrible feeling when students have to be faced with that kind of fear that’s engendered when you see the symbols of hate being out there.”

Hate among grown-ups has emboldened the same sort of behavior with schoolchildren, even if they don’t necessarily understand it, Levin said, which is part of why he thinks it’s important for schools to educate students about the meaning behind hateful symbolism.

“I can’t say that a kid that puts a swastika up on the side of the building is an anti-Semite. He probably doesn’t know enough to be an anti-Semite,” he said. “But he does know that he’s taking some action that is hateful, disrespectful, bullying, and all those things. And (the) school has an interest to try and stop that from their very beginning.”