Residents demand that authorities investigate damage at a Santa Maria arts group.
Employees and residents of a downtown Santa Maria arts charity have asked city authorities to publicly react to two vandalism incidents that damaged the center earlier this month and may have been racially motivated, according to a staff member.
According to Alex Espinoza-Kulick, the nonprofit’s executive director, the incidents on Jan. 10 and Jan. 11 stemmed from an altercation about a month ago with an individual who works in the building that houses Corazon del Pueblo, the Cultural and Creative Arts Center of the Santa Maria Valley, which is located in the 100 block of West Main St.
Corazon del Pueblo provides arts and services to the local Latino and Mixteco populations, including immunization clinics.
According to Espinoza-Kulick, the first incident occurred around 3:30 p.m., when the person became upset about a Latinx hip-hop art installation and aggressively pushed the 8-foot-tall-by-4-foot-wide object back into the nonprofit’s space, causing damage to the piece and the floor while screaming racial slurs along the way.
He said that encounters with the person had been more angry over the last month, despite efforts to peacefully resolve the matter.
The following day, at 1 p.m., Espinoza-Kulick arrived at work to find a Latino Little Free Library stand torn out of the ground, broken, and dumped in the building’s plaza adjacent to Heritage Square. The stand was created by a local artist and funded by Altrusa of the Central Coast.
Damages were assessed to be at $21,000 by Espinoza-Kulick. Both crimes were reported to the Santa Maria Police Department, but Espinoza-Kulick was concerned about the reaction.
Lt. Russ Mengel of the Detective Bureau said the instances aren’t criminal but rather civil in nature, and there doesn’t seem to be any connection to racism.
According to Mengel, the Police Department, including his office, is suffering from a scarcity of policemen. Several officers have resigned or been moved out of state, leaving the agency severely understaffed.
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