Apple AirTags can help people locate their lost luggage or find a misplaced purse but they came in handy in Chester County on Wednesday in helping to locate stolen political signs.
An AirTag on one of them aided Tredyffrin Township police in locating a dumpster containing more than 100 signs behind a restaurant in a Berwyn shopping center.
Police were studying video from the shopping center to try to identify the vehicle that pulled up to the dumpster to unload them, said township police Lt. Tyler Moyer.
He said officers told him that the signs were not targeted toward candidates of one political affiliation or another but Democratic committee member Sandy Gilson, who retrieved what she counted as 118 signs from the dumpster, disagreed.
Gilson said the campaign signs all belonged to Democratic candidates running in the Nov. 8 election in contested races: U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman, gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro, incumbent congressional candidate Chrissy Houlahan and incumbent state House candidate Melissa Shusterman.
Shusterman posted a picture of the dumpster on her Twitter feed on Wednesday.
Contacted on Wednesday afternoon, Shusterman said she was still gathering information about the rash of her campaign signs reported stolen from people’s lawns overnight Tuesday. But hearing that someone attached an air tag to one of them was ingenuous.
“Thank goodness for technology,” she said.
Shusterman’s campaign manager Deb Woolson said she was alerted on Wednesday morning about 32 signs that were taken off people’s property overnight. She said others had been removed from public areas that went up on Sunday.
“It was a lot of signs,” she said.
She was grateful to Gilson, who along with her friend Arlene Talley both had campaign signs ripped out of their yards overnight, spent Wednesday salvaging the undamaged signs and then delivering them to people who reported them stolen.
Chester County Democratic Chairwoman Charlotte Valyo said the theft of campaign signs has been a battle they endure every general election cycle but rarely does it happen in Tredyffrin Township.
“Now it seems to be a problem everywhere,” she said.
Whether it is as much of a problem for Republican candidates is unclear. A call to Dr. Raffi Terzian, the county’s Republican chairman, was not returned on Tuesday.
Valyo said, “We have counseled our people specifically that they are not to touch any other political signs. They are not to take them, move them or do anything to block them and I would expect the same from the Republicans but apparently not everyone is listening.”
As a reminder, stealing a political campaign sign can lead to a charge of theft by unlawful taking or disposition. Theft of property valued at less than $50, which most campaign yard signs are, is considered a misdemeanor of the third degree.
Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy.
Elections matter. Sign up for our politics newsletter at https://link.pennlive.com/join/6fl/signup or go here https://joinsubtext.com/pennliveelection?embed=true to get texts from PennLive’s political team with the latest news from the campaign trail.
Read more on PennLive:
John Fetterman takes questions from PennLive’s editorial board: Watch
Lori Shapiro: A behind-the-scenes motivator in husband’s gubernatorial campaign
Rebbie Mastriano emerges as a forceful figure in husband’s campaign
"filled" - Google News
October 13, 2022 at 04:50AM
https://ift.tt/p7l6MD8
AirTag leads to discovery of dumpster filled with stolen campaign signs - PennLive
"filled" - Google News
https://ift.tt/FDrxuL6
https://ift.tt/7KgTy9R
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "AirTag leads to discovery of dumpster filled with stolen campaign signs - PennLive"
Post a Comment