Atlanta police arrested a group of teenagers on Tuesday morning for allegedly stealing and destroying Pride flags from one of Blake’s on the Park, Atlanta’s most well-known gay bars, WABE reported.
Intersection video surveillance footage captured six males — some of whom rode scooters — allegedly cutting up flags with a knife around 1:40 a.m. during the late night hours of Tuesday at an intersection with rainbow-colored crosswalks.
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A man reporting their activity in a 911 call, release by police, said, “They’re in the middle of the street popping wheelies, tearing up flags.”
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“Upon spotting officers, the six males fled the scene on motorized scooters,” Atlanta police said in a statement. “Thanks to the rapid response of our officers, four of the six males were apprehended.”
Police arrested four 16-year-olds, 17-year-old Geami McCarroll, 18-year-old Logan Matthison, and 18-year-old Ahmed Mechkouri. Some of the teens arrived from the suburbs outside the city to commit the crime. They were charged with obstruction, criminal damage to property, conspiracy, and prowling with possible hate crime charges.
Police are also seeking two other individuals believed to have been involved with the vandalism.
This past year has seen numerous cases of vandalism against rainbow Pride flags and LGBTQ+ sites.
In early June, police in State College, Pennsylvania arrested 27-year-old Markos Bejiga for allegedly lighting a church’s Pride flag on fire and trying to burn others while shouting anti-LGBTQ+ slurs at passers-by. He now faces five criminal charges, though the church’s lead pastor offered the vandal “mercy and forgiveness.”
In mid-June, California police apprehended a man caught in the act of vandalizing the Pink Triangle, San Francisco’s annual and iconic Pride Month commemoration atop Twin Peaks.
In January, a man who used his truck to deface a rainbow-colored intersection dedicated to the victims of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting was fined nearly $6,000 in damages to the city of Delray Beach, Florida. His own friends helped police identify and arrest him.
In the U.S., conservative Republicans have increasingly sought laws and policies that ban the rainbow Pride flag on government property, calling such displays “divisive” and a form of “indoctrination.”
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