Campaign signs adorned with Donald Trump’s name on them are not among the lawn decorations some Odessans thought would be pilfered.

But that has been happening recently when a number of the signs that are placed in a show support for the GOP candidate have been stolen from the front yards of homes.

While the thefts are annoying to residents, all agree that the minor offenses are an affront to the the level of property respect homeowners expect from people.

“We have a right to voice who, or who we don’t want, elected president,” Debi Hays, president of the Ector County Republican Women, said. “You don’t know who’s doing it. We just want it to stop.”

Someone has been taking the signs emblazoned with the names of Trump and Mike Pence in recent weeks, Hays and other like-minded supporters said. While Hays and other Trump supporters said they don’t like the idea of someone taking whatever property that’s placed at their homes, the Odessa Police Department hasn’t been notified.

OPD spokesman Cpl. Steve LeSueur said the department hasn’t received any word of the thefts but added that the value of the signs would determine whether an investigation would be pursued.

Judy Calloway, treasurer of the Ector County Republican Women, explained that no one wanted to burden the OPD with reports about political signs getting taken because officers have bigger things to “take care of in this town.”

“It’s a minor thing,” Calloway said. “We think that people should be aware of this.”

Stealing Trump signs is nothing new as media reports show that such thefts have been happening in parts of the country in recent months. But the fact that they’re occurring in Odessa is something Hays said she could not tolerate without pointing out that coming into someone’s property to steal anything, much less a political sign, amounts to trespassing.

Hays reports that the political group she’s president of has been receiving phone calls from people complaining about the thefts. The Ector County Republican Women has received its allotment of 2,000 Trump signs, and that some go for $3 or up to $10 a piece “depending on where you buy the signs,” Hays said.

“One day we wake up and the signs are gone. They’re stealing our political viewpoint,” Hays said. “It’s the fact that people are trespassing on their property and stealing the signs. That’s a $500 fine.”

Odessan Gloria Apolinario said she has been a Republican all her life. Like many of her fellow Trump supporters, Apolinario stressed that the thefts boil down to a question of respecting the sanctity of one’s property.

“They’ve been doing it all over our neighborhood,” Apolinario said, adding that she suspects the culprits are juveniles. “I would love to give (the signs) to people, but don’t steal them.”

Ben Quiroz, a lifelong Odessan and practicing chiropractor, said the thievery is a sad reflection on the social climate where no one respects another person’s beliefs, or in this case, political viewpoints.

The signs are not important, he said, but the notion is that everyone should band together to make the Odessa community the best of all communities. Stealing political signs is clearly “a politically motivated” move some have engaged in, Quiroz said.

“It’s disrespectful for another (person) in our community,” Quiroz said.