Campaign Signs Vandalized

Dear Editor,
    Sunday morning, May 15, four different people went out to work together to take down the large campaign signs for the candidates whose political races were over. What we found was scary; almost every large campaign sign north of Lady Bird Lake has been cut down and the T-posts stolen. The hardest part of this is City Council candidates Randi Shade and Kathie Tovo are now in a run-off and someone has vandalized their signs and stolen their T-posts. These signs are all in very heavily trafficked areas. Literally dozens if not hundreds of people drove by and witnessed this vandalism and theft and not one of them called the police. Some of the locations we arrived at still had tire tracks through the morning dew. At every location some thief left the signs laying on the side of the road just waiting for a gust of wind to pick one of them up and blow it out into heavy, fast-moving traffic.
    Every elected official in the city of Austin and Travis County should be concerned by these acts of criminal theft and vandalism. Just try to imagine being a candidate and waking up some morning and seeing a news report where someone was injured or killed because one of your campaign signs was cut down and left laying on the side of the road.
    As this has grown worse over the last three years, I have started to encourage the candidates to file police reports. Two years ago I started filing police reports. This year I would very much encourage the campaigns of Chris Riley, Laura Morrison, Kris Bailey, Randi Shade, Eric Rangel, Kathie Tovo, and Roger Chan (have I missed anyone?) to all file police reports.
    I also want to encourage anyone reading this to call the police if you see someone messing with a large campaign sign. I've talked with the other people who put up and take down these signs. We all agree we would prefer to have to explain to an officer who we are and what we are doing than to see this vandalism and theft continue.