Boise police say information needed about swastika graffiti left on downtown building
Boise police are asking residents who have any knowledge of antisemitic graffiti spray-painted on a historic building downtown last weekend to contact them.
A swastika and the term “B666” were painted on either side of a doorway on the east side of the Idaho Building, at the corner of N. 8th Street and W. Bannock Street, according to Abby Gregory, a resident.
“Boise Police are aware of the graffiti,” a spokesperson for BPD, Haley Williams, wrote in an email to the Idaho Statesman. “Anyone with information is asked to call dispatch at 208-377-6790 or Crime Stoppers: at 208-343-COPS (2677).”
Williams said no charges have been filed in the incident.
In 1920, the swastika was adopted as the symbol of the Nazi Party in Germany, and it has since become synonymous with antisemitic and white supremacist hate groups. Though less common, the numbers 666, known as the “number of the beast,” can also signify the Aryan Brotherhood, a racist prison gang, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
Gregory said she left her apartment last Saturday to meet up with her friend, Mike Rogers, at a nearby park when she saw the graffiti. She had taken her dog out the previous evening and had not seen any graffiti, so she thinks it was painted late Friday night or early Saturday morning.
“I was very shocked to see that right away,” Gregory said. “It was incredibly upsetting to be confronted with a swastika. ... Symbols have so much power, and the swastika is one that is entrenched in so much hatred and division.”
After Gregory told Rogers about it, he said he walked over and took pictures of it, which he posted on Twitter.
“I don’t think I’ve seen a swastika (in Boise) before,” Rogers told the Statesman by phone. “It’s disturbing.”
A custom jeweler, Rogers had a shop in the Idaho Building, right by where the graffiti was painted, until earlier this year.
Rogers said he thinks the symbol is “indicative of a change in the political environment nationwide, (and) Idaho certainly has its share of racists.”
In September, a sign in front of St. Luke’s McCall Medical Center was defaced with a spray-painted swastika, and the Idaho Anne Frank Memorial was vandalized with Nazi stickers last December.
Lio Frey, maintenance supervisor of Parklane Management Company, which manages the Idaho Building, told the Statesman that he was not at the building last weekend, but the standard policy is for the company to report graffiti to the police and then paint over it. He said graffiti is a frequent occurrence.
Gregory said that the symbols were painted over by Sunday.
“It’s just really disappointing that something like this happened,” she said. “I think that we do need to take this seriously.”
