Swastikas and other racial slurs have been appearing on the walls inside a residential building in Cote-St-Luc, for several weeks.
“It’s frightening,” said Sheldon Lang, who lives at Equinoxe Marc-Chagall, a high-end condo building where about 90 per cent of the residents are Jewish.
“There are a lot of elderly people in the building,” he said, “many single women in their 80s plus. They’re nervous.”
The word ‘Jew’ with a line through it was written in pen on the wall, the N-word was written on a floor where there are two Black residents, and there was one with a homophobic slur.
“We called the police. They came in took pictures and filed a report,” Lang said, “We’ve now had a number of consecutive vandal type attacks in the building.”
The building management quickly removed all of the hateful graffiti but last week a swastika was discovered carved into the wall near an elevator.
“Everybody feels it’s a hate crime,” said Stephen Wise, another resident of the building. “The police addressed it as a hate crime. It’s not just graffiti; it’s a hate crime.”
There have been concerns about lacking security measures in the building for years, according to the residents. There is no doorman on duty after 4:30 p.m. and security cameras were only installed after the hate symbols and slurs began appearing on the walls.
“It’s the fear of knowing there’s hate crime in the building when you’re expecting to have the full secure building,” Wise said, who suspects the person responsible may live in the building. “All we want is for management to secure this building ASAP.”
Zachary Benitah, the building manager, said he is determined to catch the person responsible. New cameras and an intercom system have recently been installed, and he is trying to hire another doorman to monitor the entrance during the evening.
