HILLCREST – “Today we’re going to tell you the good end of the terrible story,” said District Attorney Summer Stephan. The tale began with a hate crime.
Last summer, 18 trash cans with “Welcome to Hillcrest” signs, three painted utility boxes, two businesses’ exterior walls and a mural in mural alley were defaced with swastikas and anti-gay slurs. Stephan condemned the incident as not just property damage, but one that spread shame, fear and disrespect through an entire community.
“It’s something that lingers in the back of your head that you’re not even safe at home,” said Patric Stillman, who owns art gallery Studio Door along mural alley.
Months later, Stephan was back in the historic LGBTQ+ neighborhood to announce that in a plea deal for the misdemeanor hate crime vandalism charge, the perpetrators paid $2,477 towards a restitution fund.
The individuals were also ordered to complete LGBTQ+ education classes and forbidden from entering the area. They remain on probation.
“This was the just result, and a result that was also balanced by the idea of their youth and the potential ability to rehabilitate them and have them be members of the community that do not hate,” said Stephan, at Thursday’s news conference, held at University and Fifth avenues. The event served as a preview of the new community restoration fund for Hillcrest.
The Hillcrest Business Association will use the funds to support volunteer efforts to clean up the neighborhood, including this Saturday’s quarterly Hillcrest Cleanup & Cocktails event at 8:30 a.m., which already has 180 people signed up. The fund can cover expenses like trash bags and gloves.
“Last year’s event in August is when we found some of those hate symbols that are being mentioned, and I was so proud to our community that they decided to stand up. They took pictures. We reported it with our LGBT liaisons, and they scrubbed the hell out of those hate signs, because hate does not belong in Hillcrest,” said Rick Cervantes, who co-leads the Cleanup & Cocktails event.
In August, the graffiti was in place for less than 24 hours as volunteers mobilized to scrub away the shoe polish spread throughout the neighborhood. Painters were hired to fix the murals.
“This community has certainly been under attack in a big picture way. But as this case shows in a small picture — graffiti tags and pellet guns and all sorts of things like that — have really brought us a level of fear,” said Hillcrest Business Association Executive Director Ben Nicholls, also referring to the pellet gun shootings that took place last fall.
“The way that the community responds to that is by showing up, participating, getting involved,” he said.
Strength and resilience despite graffiti
As a former Hillcrest resident, Deputy DA Abigail Dillon said the quick response from the community to the incident showed its strength and resilience. “I can’t emphasize enough what a testament it is to the community that so many people came out and made sure that attention was brought to this. So many of these crimes just go unreported, and if they go unreported, they never reach our office for prosecution.”
Dillon led the prosecution and worked alongside San Diego Police Department in the investigation. As the head of the DA’s hate crimes division, she noted 2024 saw an increase in hate crimes against the LGBTQ+ community. They tied, for the first time she can remember, with race-motivated hate crimes.
The DA does not track hate crimes by neighborhood but Hillcrest saw at least a handful of anti-LGBTQ+ hate incidents in 2024. In addition to the graffiti and drive-by pellet shootings of pedestrians. a possible bullet hit the window of a nonprofit serving transgender immigrants.
Capt. Matt Dobbs, who commands the SDPD’s Western Division, said the individuals responsible for the graffiti would not have been found without smart street light cameras and license plate readers installed in the neighborhood following other hate incidents.
“I know that some recent events in the nation and some rhetoric have left some in the community feeling erased and disenfranchised,” said Dobbs. “I want them to know that the San Diego Police Department sees them. We hear them, but most importantly, we are here for them.”
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