Swastika painted on Danbury home

Daequan Rosado lives across the street from a home where a swastika symbol was painted on Division Street in Danbury sometime over the weekend. Photo Monday, Nov. 14, 2016. Daequan Rosado lives across the street from a home where a swastika symbol was painted on Division Street in Danbury sometime over the weekend. Photo Monday, Nov. 14, 2016. Photo: Carol Kaliff / Hearst Connecticut Media Buy photo Photo: Carol Kaliff / Hearst Connecticut Media Image 1 of / 17 Caption Close Swastika painted on Danbury home 1 / 17 Back to Gallery

DANBURY — Police are investigating a half-dozen instances in which swastikas were spray-painted on private property during the past few weeks — most recently over the weekend, when the Nazi symbol was left on a home and a parked car on Division Street.

“It’s really upsetting,” said Daequan Rosado, who lives across from the home. “This is a very ethnic neighborhood with a lot of diversity. I hope my kids didn’t see it, but they probably don’t know what it means at this point.”

Swastikas were spray-painted on other homes in the same neighborhood in the weeks before the presidential election, and on Oct. 24 one was scratched into the door of a van belonging to Catholic Charities in its West Street parking lot. The organization provides therapy, food, low-interest loans and other assistance to those in need.

“Catholic Charities is an organization that, for 100 years, has served the poor and most needy in our community,” said Al Barber, president of Catholic Charities of Fairfield County. “That anyone would spread a message with such negative connotations on our property is very unsettling to our staff and our supporters, to say the least.”

Mayor Mark Boughton said police have stepped up patrols in the Division Street neighborhood and will closely monitor the situation.

“There is no room for hate and intolerance in Danbury,” Boughton said. “Anyone found responsible for the hate speech will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

The Anti-Defamation League has reported an increased national incidence of hate speech, including the use of swastikas, since the presidential campaigns swung into gear over the summer. Connecticut chapter Director Steve Ginsberg said several such incidents have been reported across the state in the past week.

“There have been reports across Connecticut including in Waterbury, Watertown and Milford,” he said.

Equally disturbing, he said, is a video released recently of a group of people in East Windsor wearing Ku Klux Klan outfits around a bonfire. The New York chapter, he added, is getting new reports of hate speech every hour in towns throughout the state.

Ginsberg said hate speech probably would have increased whoever won the presidency last week. What concerns the organization most, he said, is the sense of empowerment seemingly felt by fringe elements that had previously kept in the shadows.

“Our success within the Anti-Defamation League and other groups during the past 50 years has not been to eliminate anti-Semitism, racism and bigotry, but to make it socially unacceptable,” Ginsberg said. “We are very concerned about that unraveling.”

The American Nazi Party, for example, has said Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election should serve as a call to action for white supremacists.

“This sleeping giant not only will, but has awakened,” the party wrote on its website shortly after the election. “If nothing else, this election has shown us that it is possible to win.”

For older Danbury residents, the hate speech and political unrest isn’t new. The city was a hotbed of racial tension in the late 1970s, when race riots broke out at Danbury High School and members of the Ku Klux Klan became active in the area.

KKK members told The News-Times in 1982 they dedicated a cross-burning ceremony on private property on Spruce Mountain Road to Dimples Armstrong, a black woman who taught science classes at Danbury High School in 1970s.

Boughton said he hopes those times are gone forever.

“It was a time of change and there was a lot of racism directed toward the African-American community in Danbury,” said Boughton. “But the community has worked very hard to create an equilibrium and an environment of mutual respect.”

dperrefort@newstimes.com