This incident got so much notice because it was a Jackie Robinson statue. This sort of thing has been happening all over. This was recently reported in Los Angeles:
On Jan. 11, vandals robbed Lincoln Memorial of more than 100 bronze plaques, including one donated by champion boxer Joe Louis in 1949, according to Woods, one of the volunteers who run the cemetery. It is the second cemetery thieves have recently targeted in the Carson-Compton area, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
The estimated damage and cost of the missing plaques is upwards of $2 million, according to the Sheriff’s Department.
A week before the incident at Lincoln Memorial, thieves targeted the adjacent Woodlawn Memorial Park. As of Jan. 9, they had identified nearly 300 graves that had been vandalized; headstones on 92 in-ground graves had been knocked over and smashed and more than 200 plaques had been removed from mausoleum walls.
The Sheriff’s Department will also investigate claims by residents that a third cemetery, the Angeles Abbey Memorial Park in Compton, also has been vandalized. An employee at Angeles Abbey declined to comment.
Lt. Vincent Ursini of the Sheriff’s Department Major Crimes Bureau said authorities have not yet identified suspects but are chasing leads and reviewing security footage.
“It’s a sad state of affairs when you’re in your final resting spot and you can’t even rest in peace without somebody smashing your tombstone to get the metal off,” he said.
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