Tag: New Hampshire

NH man charged with writing racist graffiti on refugee home could get up to 30 years

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
It is all about the letter ‘b’   Photo: Concord Monitor

He has plead not guilty.  Evidence against him is based on handwriting analysis.

For a background on the arrest, go here.

From AP at the San Francisco Chronicle:

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — The lawyer for a New Hampshire man charged with penning racist graffiti on the homes of African refugee families has entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.

Raymond Stevens, 42, of Pembroke was scheduled to be arraigned on a felony criminal mischief charge in Merrimack Superior Court Wednesday, but the plea eliminates the need for that hearing.

Stevens was arrested Oct. 15 and charged with writing hateful messages in black permanent marker on the homes of four refugee families in the same Concord neighborhood in 2011 and 2012. He is free on $8,000 bond.

If convicted, Stevens faces 10 to 30 years in prison because police say the crime was motivated by hostility toward the victims’ race and national origin.

Case hinges on his handwriting, specifically the letter ‘b’:

Concord Det. Det. Wade Brown looked through more than 1,000 criminal files and complaints generated from the city’s South End between 2009-2011 looking for any handwritten documents featuring the distinctive lowercase letter “b” written like the number six, along with other distinctive letters and unusual word choices used in the graffiti.

When that search failed, Brown turned to gun permit applications and found one submitted by Stevens, who used to live in the same neighborhood where the graffiti appeared.

“Three telltale “b’s” appeared to be an exact match to the racist messages,” Brown wrote in his arrest warrant application.

Searches of Stevens’ home, car and the tattoo parlor he owns in Nashua turned up more handwriting samples that were sent to the FBI for analysis. Police also found racist cartoons and writings on his Facebook pages that “were clearly indicative of a white supremacist ideology,” according to the affidavit.

I doubt writings on Facebook will hold much water in court—we still have freedom of speech.

Photo is from this Concord Monitor story and it’s clearer there.

We have written many many posts on New Hampshire which is one of those formerly red states being turned blue with a big push to bring in refugees and other immigrants.  Click here for more on New Hampshire where efforts have been made, but unsuccessful, for a moratorium on further refugee resettlement.

New Hampshire: Arrest made in 2011 case of anti-refugee graffiti

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Arrested: Raymond Stevens

Update October 20th:  Stevens charged with hate crime, here.

Here is the story yesterday at the Concord Monitor.  There may be more updates today, but I haven’t seen them yet.  Here is what we said about this case back in 2011.

A Pembroke tattoo artist was arrested this morning for his alleged role in a 2011 graffiti incident in which three refugee homes in South Concord were defaced with racist, xenophobic messages, an event that sparked widespread outrage.

Raymond “Raynard” Stevens, 42, was apprehended around 9 a.m. at his home in Pembroke, Concord Police Chief John Duval said. Stevens has been charged with one Class B felony for criminal mischief, an offense that can bring a prison sentence of between one and seven years but could bring more in this case because of a state hate crime statute.

[…..]

The messages Stevens stands accused of composing were discovered on Sept. 18, 2011. Etched in black marker across the clapboard facades of the Perley and Downing street homes, they declared that the city had been sullied by the refugees’ arrivals from Rwanda, Somalia and the Congo.

According to the Monitor, Stevens was a regular on facebook describing himself as an animal-lover, an environmentalist and a proud Aryan man.  Here is an excerpt of one of his facebook posts:

Stevens does not appear to have made any postings on or near the date of the vandalism, or if he did they have since been removed. In a Facebook post on Feb. 2, 2012, though, he shared some of his views on race: “I hate the argument that we cant help what race we were born into, and therefor you should not be proud of your race (unless your a minority). you are allowed to be proud of your race when you can look at your self and say . i am born in to a fine line of men and women that did stupendously miraculous things with the world around them.”

“if your culture produced many advances before you, it will be likely passed down into you,” he continued later in the post. “when your born into a third world nation, you wouldn’t understand that. being that you look at the people of your kind that came before you and see they built nearly nothing in the same time span of other more successful races.”

Authorities obviously put a lot of energy into capturing this writer with dangerous ideas.  He should have just stuck to writing on his facebook page and not on peoples’ homes.

…..the arrest the result of a “multi-agency effort with vital assistance provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States Attorney’s Office, the Merrimack County Attorney’s Office, the Nashua Police Department, and the Pembroke Police Department.”