Watch: Ann Arbor police release video of suspects defacing Jewish Resource Center grounds
ANN ARBOR, Mich. (CBS DETROIT) - The Ann Arbor Police Department has released surveillance video of two suspects defacing the Jewish Resource Center at the University of Michigan.
The video, dated Aug. 22, shows what looks like two young adults spray painting homophobic slurs and graphic images on the walkway of the JRC just after 5 p.m.
"They're young adults, definitely," said AAPD Interim Police Chief Aimee Metzer. "I think in the video, we can pretty assertively say there's one male and one female. There's a potential there that's it's a student, but, obviously, the campus in Ann Arbor is a pretty diverse environment, so it could just be people that were coming in to see the city."
The director of the Jewish Resource Center, Rabbi Fully Eisenberger, said he was shocked that no one intervened despite it happening in broad daylight.
"It was more even the people that were walking by that nobody said anything," said Rabbi Eisenberger. "To me, that was a huge shock how people just allow other people to deface a building and an organization in the middle of the day. It was shocking to me."
After watching the video, he said he was disheartened to see what looked like students committing the crime.
"I was hoping that it wouldn't have been students and maybe just some crazy people that were coming from different cities nearby," said Rabbi Eisenberger. "But, what it looked like from the video is college student-aged (individuals). To me, that's like, how could you possibly go to a school like this that promotes peace and is very anti-hate and do something in broad daylight like that? Even if a person is intoxicated, there's a certain level of control that a person should have."
The police department is investigating a separate graffiti incident on the 1300 block of South University it believes happened on the same evening.
"It has racist slurs, homophobic slurs painted, and that's not tolerable," said Metzer. "It shouldn't be tolerated anywhere in this country, but it certainly isn't in Ann Arbor."
Rabbi Eisenberger said he has been in contact with U-M President Santa Ono, who has been supportive in guiding his organization with the next steps.
As for the investigation, Metzer said the community has been helpful with the case.
"We've been getting a lot of feedback from the community with the potential suspects," she said. "We can't thank the community enough for engaging in that way. It takes both of us acting as a team – the community and the police department. Based on the feedback and information we've received, I'm pretty confident that we'll be able to solve at least one of these in the coming days."
Anyone with information is asked to contact the Ann Arbor Police Department tip line at 734-794-6939 or at tips@a2gov.org.
