The Springfield Police Department has assigned an investigator to look into the alleged theft of 59 Harris/Walz signs from a Springfield neighborhood. They’re currently at SPD after being recovered at a Nixa home by the Nixa Police Department.
Laura McCaskill said she and her partner John Cardoza have had four campaign signs stolen from their Rountree yard. Many others, she said, have had signs stolen as well, so she decided to do something about it, and her story is attracting worldwide attention from media outlets, including Reuters and the BBC.
A recent Facebook video shows McCaskill and Cardoza tracking a stolen sign to which they’d attached an Apple AirTag to a residence in Nixa.
In the video, they ask a young man if he can open the trunk of a vehicle to which the device has led them.
Once the trunk is open, revealing many Harris/Walz campaign signs, a woman, who the young man calls his mom, is seen picking some up and handing them to McCaskill and Cardoza saying, “Here you go, liberals.”
McCaskill said she decided to post the video not to shame the perpetrator but to stand up for her neighbors.
“If it was just my sign or two signs, I wouldn't have posted it," she said. "This is a major theft. This was a major effort. It's different. I need to do this for my neighbors. I've been — it's almost like it made them come out of their shell, and they're hurt by this. And what he doesn't understand, this young man, he said, 'well, you're trespassing on my property,' you know, really? You trespassed on 59 lawns. You took something from them.”
She hopes her neighbors will all file a police report, and she said she intends to press charges. She wants answers to why someone would brazenly steal someone else's property. And she's curious why the perpetrator didn't dispose of them but kept them in the trunk of a car.
Springfield Police Department Spokesperson Cris Swaters said, if someone has had their Harris/Walz (or any) yard sign stolen and would like it back, they first need to file a police report for stealing online. After the report is received, the detective on the case “will determine if seized property belongs to the reporting party.”
McCaskill said her son is grown now, but if he was younger and she knew he had stolen Trump signs, she would have made him apologize, return the signs and offer to do yard work for the victims.
“If there had been behavior of ‘I’m so embarrassed. I’m so sorry for my son. I’m going to have a talk about this. I’m going to be in touch with you to make sure that he comes into your neighborhood and replaces every one of those signs and apologize to everybody.’ (I) never heard that.”
