Nazi Graffiti Found on Bridge in Plainfield

PLAINFIELD, IL — Perla Ramirez was talking a walk Saturday across the River Road bridge, enjoying the colorful autumn leaves and crisp air, when she saw it.

Scrawled on the bridge were the words “hate crew” and a swastika, but what upset Ramirez even more was that no one else seemed to care about it.

“There must have been at least six people who traversed the bridge while I was standing there in shock, looking down, and nobody stopped,” she said.

She doesn’t understand why people feel the need to be so “nasty.”

Ramirez said she called the non-emergency number of the Plainfield Police Department to report the graffiti.

As of Tuesday morning, the graffiti was still there, she said. She called the Plainfield Park District this morning with the hope that someone will clean it up.

Plainfield Park District Executive Director Carlo J. Capalbo said the district was made aware of the issue Tuesday and that the graffiti has been removed. He also said they've been in contact with police.

Ramirez thinks the graffiti in Plainfield was done by the same person responsible for a recent spate of racist graffiti in Joliet.

“The way they wrote the graffiti, if you compare it with the ones that happened in Old Renwick Trail, it’s the same.”

In a video taken by ABC 7, the words “hate crew” can be found scrawled on a garage door in Joliet, the same words found on the bridge.

Plainfield Police Department Detective Sergeant Kevin McQuaid said there are no suspects at the time, but police are looking into possible connections to similar incidents in Joliet.

“I can’t definitively say they are linked,” McQuaid said.

It’s also unknown if this is just the work of kids, but McQuaid said police consider the issue a serious matter and are trying to prevent it from happening.

As far as McQuaid knows, there have been no other incidents of this nature that have been reported to the police.

photo courtesy of Perla Ramirez