COLORADO SPRINGS — Thursday, Aug. 10, 2017 — Gov. Hickenlooper, Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers, and Colorado Springs Police Chief Pete Carey offered the following statement in response to recent anti-Semitic activities in Colorado Springs.
“We write today to take a stand after Temple Beit Torah was the target of hateful vandalism when its sign was defaced with Nazi graffiti. Numerous cars around the Temple also were painted with swastikas and racial epithets. It is the second incident at a synagogue in Colorado Springs in less than a month. In July, an alleged white supremacist was arrested in Colorado Springs for putting an anti-Semitic sticker on the door of the Chabad Lubavitch of Southern Colorado. These hateful activities have come during a time of increasing anti-Semitic and racially-motivated attacks in Colorado and around the nation. The Anti-Defamation League Mountain States Region reports that anti-Semitic incidents in Colorado have increased at an alarming rate, with 18 such activities in 2015 and 45 in 2016. If the trend continues, we expect there will be more than 60 incidents in 2017. This is unacceptable.