Vandals looking to violate the sanctity of graveyards in the city of brotherly love are in for a shock, after the Philadelphia City Council passed a bill making each and every desecrated or vandalized headstone a discrete hate crime and a separate finable offense.
According to the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, Councilman Kenyatta Johnson created the Ethnic Intimidation and Institutional Vandalism bill in order as a form of deterrence after more than 175 tombstones were overturned in the city’s Mt. Carmel Cemetery this February. Another cemetery in St. Louis was vandalized the same week.
“Originally, if you desecrated a headstone inside of a cemetery, you will be charged one single count,” Johnson was quoted as saying. “My bill will make it so you will be charged for each individual headstone … to send a clear message that these hate crimes will not be tolerated.” 
According to the report, the fine for damaging one headstone stands at $2,000 while three headstones would be grounds for a month’s imprisonment.
“First and foremost, I am an African-American, so I come from a history of activism and addressing issues of social justice,” Johnson said, noting his feelings for his “Jewish brothers and sisters.”
“I believe that no human beings should be subjected to any part of hate or discrimination based upon their religious or ethnic identity.”
World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder said in February following the vandalism that the incidents were “not just on the Jewish community but on the very values of liberty and fraternity that America stands for” and called for such acts to be treated with the “utmost severity.”
“The desecration of the cemetery in Philadelphia today, and in St. Louis last week, are chillingly reminiscent of the pogroms the Jewish people suffered for centuries in Eastern Europe, and in the years of the Nazi rise to power,” Lauder said in that statement. “We must never be complacent in the face of such anti-Semitism, or any forms of hatred and bigotry, because even seemingly innocuous threats can all too quickly end in unspeakable horror.”
