Car drives onto front yards, taking out campaign signs

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - Jack Clair would describe his neighborhood on Arlene Street as a generally quiet neighborhood. However, within the past month, a variety of houses in the neighborhood have started to report acts of vandalism toward political signs on their yards.

On Oct. 6, Jack Clair captured surveillance footage of someone walking up to his front yard and ripping out one of his campaign posters.

Then, on Oct. 27, his surveillance footage caught another incident.

“Somebody had driven through my yard,” Clair said. “There was tire tracks and then as I looked at it further, they had driven over all the political signs in my yard.”

This was Clair’s first time putting political signs on his property. Clair said that he has heard of similar instances involving political sign vandalism in the past, but said that the most recent incident was unprecedented.

“It’s unbelievable that anybody would just drive through somebody’s yard,” he said. “It started off as somebody, now they are driving through our properties. It’d be nice if this stopped.”

Clair reported the incident online to the Anchorage Police Department. A spokesperson for Anchorage police said that situations like this are difficult to investigate, and the department released a statement.

“While we are aware vandalism has occurred to political signs, we have no way of tracking that type of vandalism specifically so we cannot tell you how many incidents of political sign vandalism have been reported to us.”

Despite the outcome, Clair said this does not discourage him from placing signs in his yard again. He just hopes people will be more respectful of each other’s beliefs.

“We can certainly have a difference of opinion without getting violent towards one or another or trying to intimate each other in this way,” Clair said.

Copyright 2022 KTUU. All rights reserved.