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Agent Zero inks 44 (Obama) TORRANCE -- Vandals over the weekend attacked homes in south Torrance that displayed support for President-elect Obama, spray-painting cars, walls, trees and campaign signs with swastikas and racial slurs. One Hollywood Riviera resident awakened to find a large Nazi symbol on a tree, the N-word across her garage door and the phrase "Go back to Africa" scrawled across a front wall. "They had painted a big swastika on my car and spray-painted out my bumper sticker," she said Monday. Bernard Anderson said officers took four vandalism reports Sunday morning. One couple who live near Calle Mayor found the words "Hitler" and "Nazi" painted in black on their Volkswagen. The crimes appeared to have occurred sometime between 10 pm Saturday and Sunday morning. Police are investigating the vandalism as hate crimes, making them potential felonies, Anderson said. "From our standpoint this is absolutely a very serious incident," Anderson said. "We are trying to determine whether the hate message is directed at individuals or affiliated with a political issue." Each of the targeted residences displayed Obama campaign signs in their front yards or bumper stickers on their cars. "God forbid these people come back again," said a Southwood resident Advertisement who found four Swastikas and a symbol for "Heil Hitler" on her car. "I was shocked and appalled and just frightened that this would happen in this day and age." "I had a lot of McCain-Palin supporters that came up to me and were so upset and were really expressing their support," she said. "' The Anti-Defamation League reported Monday that "anger among white supremacists and other right-wing extremists in response to Obama's victory resulted in an avalanche of vitriolic postings on racist Web sites." Amanda Susskind, regional director of the ADL's Los Angeles office, said attacks like those in Torrance should be taken seriously and used for education. "When these things happen, the instinct is to write it off as just kids or think of it as a moment that will pass," Susskind said. "I think of it as a moment where it's an opportunity for education, for parents to make an extra effort this week to talk to their kids about what it means to say these things." In the week before the election, Palos Verdes Estates resident John Dowsing said he received threatening phone calls from people claiming to be members of the "Nazi Party" who didn't want Obama in the White House. Dowsing had posted Obama signs in his yard, only to have them repeatedly torn down in the night. It was unknown if the calls had any connection to what occurred in Torrance. Torrance police asked anyone with information about the vandalism to contact them. Anderson said detectives and community lead officers are working together to try to identify suspects. One of the targeted residents took her signs down immediately because of fear for her family. "It made me think this is a small price to pay for what we achieved to get him elected. I think people have suffered far worse than this in our nation's history," she said. "I'm proud that we supported him and he's going to be our next president.
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