This
booking photo released by the Concord Police Department shows Raymond
Stevens, of Pembroke, N.H., arrested Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2013, on charges
of criminal mischief after a two-year investigation into racist graffiti
scrawled on the homes of several Concord, N.H., families originally
from Africa. The messages were written in black permanent marker on the
siding next to the main doors at each home. Police said Stevens lived in
the neighborhood at the time. (AP Photo/Concord Police Department)
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
A New Hampshire detective
combed through hundreds of gun permit applications to find one with a
distinctive lowercase “b” that led to an arrest in a 2-year-old racist
graffiti case, police said Tuesday.
Concord police said Raymond Stevens, 42, used a
permanent black marker to deface the homes of three African refugee
families in September 2011. On one home was scrawled, “The subhumans in
this house are enjoying a free ride.” On another, “Go back to your hell
and leave us alone.”
Stevens wrote graffiti on a fourth house in the
same south Concord neighborhood a year later, according to police. One
of the phrases written on that home was, “We cannot coexist with Third
World scum.”
Honore Murenzi, director of the community group
“New American Africans,” said one family targeted in the 2011 incidents
moved away in fear soon after discovering the graffiti on their home.
The other three families are “very excited” about the arrests, he said.
“The level of uncertainty no longer exists,”
said Murenzi, who said the families, two each from Somalia and Congo,
feared a violent attack would follow the graffiti.
The big break in the case came after a detective
combed through thousands of pages of documents hoping to match the
writing on the vandalized homes to someone who had contact with police.
Det. Wade Brown looked through more than 1,000
criminal files and complaints generated from the city’s South End
between 2009-11 looking for any handwritten documents featuring the
distinctive lowercase letter “b” written like the number six, along with
other distinctive letters and unusual word choices used in the
graffiti.
When that search came up empty, he turned to
more than 1,500 gun permit applications on file with the Concord police
department.
In Sept. 2012 he found an application filed by Stevens, who once lived in the neighborhood targeted in the graffiti incidents.
Stevens was arrested Tuesday and charged
with felony criminal mischief. He faces a stiffer penalty of 10-30 years
in prison because police say the crime was motivated “by hostility
toward the victims’ race and national origin.”
He was arraigned Tuesday and jailed on $8,000 bail.
His public defender, Melinda Siranian, and his
wife declined to comment as they left court. Siranian argued for no
bail, saying he has no criminal record.
Concord Police Chief John Duval said the crimes
were “truly despicable” and noted that all the homes targeted had small
children living in them. He called the investigation “a classic case of
leaving no rock unturned.”
“The nature of these crimes is so deplorable, it
didn’t matter how much time was spent,” the chief said. “Concord’s a
great city. Being rocked at its foundation by something hateful is not
going to be tolerated.”
Stevens is scheduled to return to court Oct. 24.