San Leandro Suspect Charged With Hate Crime For Racist Graffiti
SAN LEANDRO (CBS SF) – A San Leandro man was charged Thursday with a felony hate crime and felony vandalism for allegedly spray-painting racial slurs on a school district office, prosecutors said.
Cody Sisson, 21, who is being held at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin in lieu of $57,500 bail, is scheduled to be arraigned in Alameda County Superior Court in Hayward at 2 p.m. on Friday.
Police said that at about 8 a.m. on Monday a San Leandro Unified School District employee found racial slurs and symbols spray-painted on office doors to an annex building at 14735 Juniper St.
Sisson was arrested in the parking lot of Porky's Pizza in the 1200 block of Manor Boulevard on Wednesday afternoon riding a bicycle that police believe had been recently spray-painted with red and white paint, the same colors used in the graffiti, police said.
San Leandro police Officer Thomas Rogers wrote in a probable cause statement that last Saturday night Sisson had a friend obtain two cans of spray paint, one red and one white, to vandalize the school district building.
Rogers said Sisson sprayed hate-filled symbols on the rear entrance to the main office, including a picture of an upside down cross with three 6's around it.
One of the doors had a disparaging comment about black people and the words "White Power," Rogers said.
It cost school officials more than $950 to replace the glass windows and a keypad, according to Rogers.
The officer who spotted Sisson in the Porky's Pizza parking lot on Wednesday afternoon conducted a drug intoxication evaluation on Sisson and determined he was under the influence of a central nervous system stimulant and placed him under arrest, Rogers said.
When police interviewed Sisson, he admitted that he had spray-painted racial slurs at the school building and said he did so "because he hates Christianity and hates African-Americans," Rogers wrote.
Sisson also said he "believed the white race is a superior race and believed the graffiti would cause terror in those that saw it," Rogers said.
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