There is a closed-down big box store that's been abandoned for the entire time I've lived in my little town. I often walk through it's side lot as a way of chopping a few moments out of my walk from my house to uptown. Yesterday, I noticed that there was graffiti on the side of the building. Nothing too harmful at first: A big smiley face and odd phrases like "Tat this" and "FTP" (to which I nerdily thought: 'file transfer process? Odd gang callsign'). Then I kept going, and that's when I noticed, against a far retaining wall, the swastika.
It was crudely drawn, in red spray paint, with "White Pride" and a rough sketch of a confederate flag below it. I'm in a heavily-white, rural Ohio town, so I wasn't the most surprised. I had errands to run, so I walked into town, stopped by the police station and reported it to the dispatcher, ran my errands, and headed back. As I wandered back, I noticed two kids, maybe high school age, riding up the driveway that leads down to the big box store--the road that is supported by the retaining wall. I took a suspicious look at them. They stopped at the top of the road for a moment, and I ducked down the road they'd just come up, to have a look at the wall.
Sure enough, somebody had been back. They re-drew the lines of the first swastika to make it thicker, more noticeable. Additionally, somebody had added, this time in yellow spraypaint, "hail hitler" (Apparently white supremacists are not familiar with capitalization) and there was also another cartoonish smiley face, painted in red with yellow for the eyes and mouth.
Putting two and two together, I'd run up the road to where the kids on bikes had been, but they were gone. I called the police station again and reported that, in the 20 minutes since I'd last been on site, there had been fresh paint added to the wall. I'd walked along the wall to see if there was anything else, all while giving my story to the dispatcher a second time (a new dispatcher had apparently just started her shift, and hadn't heard my report), and found a second swastika, also in red, but looking more faded, as if it had been added in the first wave rather than recently.
I wracked my brain to try to remember the descriptions of the two boys, and I was able to manage to remember some basic facts. Both high school age, wearing t-shirts. Height looked around 5'10 or so, but it was hard to tell as they were on bikes. One had a red baseball cap, one had straight, long, blonde hair. Neither had facial hair or any other distinguishing marks that I could remember. I've taken enough psychology to remember how unreliable witness testimony can be, and this was quite the object lesson. I did remember that at least one had a backpack, and when the dispatcher seemed to hesitate when I said I hadn't seen the boys use the spraypaint, I told her I bet that if they found the boys, there would be spraypaint in their backpack. I couldn't be sure, of course, but it would have had to be a heck of a coincidence if there was somebody else who'd passed by within the last 20 minutes--I may use it as a shortcut, but I very rarely see anyone else.
Today, I drove by the site again, to see if there had been any changes, and there weren't--but then I drove all the way around the building. Not 100 feet from where the graffiti I'd spotted the other day was, there was more, hidden in the back near a loading dock. It said "NI--ER" (albeit without the censorship) with a circle and a line through it. There was some other graffiti, this time in black, but I couldn't make it out.
That is my story, thus far. I haven't reported my latest finding yet, but I was wondering--if there happens to be anyone out there with a law enforcement background, or simply experience with this sort of thing. What can I expect the police department to do about this? This isn't public property, and whatever company used to run the store (I believe it was a Wal-Mart) has moved out. Is there anything I should ask the police about when I go back in?
Thanks.