Two teenagers were arrested in Worthing last week in connection with a spate of racist graffiti which occurred over the festive period.
The teenagers, aged nineteen and seventeen, have been released on bail until January 26 to give police officers time to investigate CCTV evidence. The tags were sprayed at various points along the Worthing seafront along with the swastika symbol, which appears quite clearly next to a large tag which reads ‘PAWZ’. One on the vandals provocatively scrawled ‘Catch me if you can’ along the Pier Pavilion.
Local councillor, John Rogers, described the vandalism as, “absolutely appalling” and remarked, “what is the matter with these people?” Some of the graffiti tags were four foot high.
Just two days before the arrests, police announced that they were offering a £500 cash reward for any assistance in the search for the culprits. Streetscene Officer, Michael Bernard, of Worthing Council was not in a position to state whether or not the incidents were deemed to be significantly racist, due to the fact that he is still in the process of ‘collating evidence’ from the Christmas blitz. This is not the first time that such incidents have occurred in Worthing. In 2006, on Armistice Day, the local War Memorial was covered in graffiti which included the swastika symbol. There is however, no evidence to suggest there are any links between the current episode and that which occurred in 2006.
