Swastikas, racist slurs painted on a playground and a golf course outside Philadelphia

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This story was originally published in the Forward . Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.

The police were still there when neighbors arrived to clean up the Philadelphia playground where vandals had struck.

They had come to a playground in Abington Township, just outside Philadelphia, on Saturday morning with cleaning supplies. Officers had been called and were still collecting evidence from the swastikas that someone had spray-painted on the playground equipment and the blacktop, and from the N-word painted on the playground’s sign. So the volunteers waited. Then dozens of them, along with volunteer firefighters and school district staff, went to work.

Abington Township police have several investigative leads, Deputy Chief Ed Quinn told the Forward . “I’m confident we’re making an arrest and holding those responsible accountable for their actions,” he said, adding that it is too early to say whether charges would include a hate crime.

A week earlier, about 25 miles away, someone carved swastikas and a racial slur into the greens at…