Opinions

Anchorage is fortunate to have politicians so in tune, vandals so polite

Correction: An earlier version of this column incorrectly said a local businessman was prosecuted years ago for vandalizing his own business. There was no such prosecution. This is the corrected version.

As the dust settles from a shocking bit of vandalism that stirred so much attention in Anchorage, all of us in this city -- each and every last one of us -- should be thanking our lucky stars.

It seems Sudanese immigrants living in a Spenard apartment awoke last Sunday to find "Go Home," "Leave Alaska," "Get Out," "Go Now" scrawled on their cars, and their tires flatter than Gov. Bill Walker's re-election chances. Oh, and there may have been a profane word used too.

One of the two reported to police what he interpreted as threatening messages on the vehicles. He wanted a cop sent immediately but did not get one, though officers went to the apartments that afternoon seeking information, without much success. There may have been miscommunication about the whosits and whatsits of it all, whether it was a hate crime (it was not) or a language mixup -- or a different world view.

Whatever sparked the kerfuffle, the two since have received a department apology -- from a police captain, no less -- although it is debatable police did anything wrong.

The community wasted little time in rallying behind the victims; the news media, unsurprisingly, got the vapors. It did appear, after all, to be an intolerable, ham-handed attack on diversity. There were cash donations. A potluck. You name it. Anchorage mayoral candidates were sucked in like bees to honey, and swiftly, uncategorically condemned the reprehensible act.

Ethan Berkowitz, Alaska Dispatch News reported, said as mayor he personally would call the victims to "let them know I was with them."

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Candidate Andrew Halcro said the vandalism underscored a "lack of cohesiveness" in Anchorage, ADN reported. As mayor, he said, he already would have pursued stronger ties with the Sudanese community.

Dan Coffey said it was an "awful, hateful, spiteful kind of thing," the newspaper reported, and vowed "if he were mayor, he would call a press conference and 'condemn it loud and clear.'"

A fourth leading candidate, Amy Demboski, told the ADN shortly after the crime that "she had only seen a headline referencing the incident and didn't know the specifics. She said people shouldn't rush to conclusions about what happened ..."

We are fortunate some of our public servants and public servant wannabes are so in sync with the city's problems and needs; so quick to want to fix things, to make phone calls, to stand with victims, to hold news conferences, to be so, well, cohesive in the face of such callous incohesiveness.

We in Anchorage also are blessed, it turns out, with a better class of vandal than you might stumble across elsewhere. Places like Detroit. Or Chicago. Or L.A. Or just about anyplace.

Oh, make no mistake, we have our share of run-of-the-mill murderers, robbers, rapists and drug dealers who can hold their own anywhere. But our vandals? A different breed of cat, apparently, with loftier standards than garden-variety despoilers.

When our kinder, gentler defilers of others' property go to work, for instance, they are so refined they use gutter language only hesitantly, and eschew the most base racial or ethnic slurs routinely spray-painted by others of their métier. Their dastardly messages here are more direct, if less caustic: "Go Home," "Leave Alaska," "Get Out," "Go Now." In one such attack years ago, the vandals, never identified, painted simply "We hate Arabs." So much for venom.

Much to their credit, and unlike elsewhere, our marauders apparently try to avoid causing real or costly damage. In the Spenard case, for instance, our virtuoso villains even used water-soluble paint -- the kind car dealers use to mark prices on windshields -- rather than tough-to-remove spray enamel. (A tip: Brake parts cleaner strips spray paint off car finishes handily. Ask me how I know.) The vandals, again to their credit, did not key the vehicles, break headlights or windshields, or pour anything into the gas tanks.

Our vandals -- even in a parking lot where people come and go at will -- risked taking time to harmlessly deflate tires rather than quickly slashing them to bits or stabbing the sidewalls, saving the owners a great deal of expense.

Hooray for our miscreant maestros! If all this had been done by, say, low-class vandals vacationing here from, say, Detroit, or Chicago, or L.A., it could have turned out much, much worse.

We should, indeed, thank our lucky stars.

Paul Jenkins is editor of the AnchorageDailyPlanet.com, a division of Porcaro Communications, which has provided materials to the mayoral campaigns of Amy Demboski and Andrew Halcro.

The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.

Paul Jenkins

Paul Jenkins is a former Associated Press reporter, managing editor of the Anchorage Times, an editor of the Voice of the Times and former editor of the Anchorage Daily Planet.

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