News Photo by Julie Riddle Spray-painted letters on an Alpena sidewalk remain after vandals marked a neighborhood with graffiti early Tuesday morning. Ella White Elementary School was also hit by the vandals.

ALPENA — Police are searching for suspects after graffiti touting the Black Lives Matter movement was spray-painted around an Alpena neighborhood early Tuesday morning.

The letters “BLM” were painted multiple times on the east side of Ella White Elementary School and on a school dumpster in brown spray paint. Similar paintings and others reading “black lives matter” and “George Floyd” were reported on sidewalks and personal property along a stretch of 4th Avenue, from Ripley Boulevard to Maple Street.

Police are investigating the vandalism, but no arrests have yet been made, according to Lt. Eric Hamp, of the Alpena Police Department.

If an arrest is made, the subjects will likely be charged with malicious destruction of property. The wording of the graffiti doesn’t show intent to intimidate on the basis of race and shouldn’t lead to stiffer charges, Hamp said.

Protests, riots, and looting have sprung up across America since George Floyd, a black man, was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis on May 25.

The Alpena vandalism occurred between 1 and 6 a.m., according to area residents, who say the street is usually a peaceful neighborhood.

The graffiti was limited to the south side of 4th Avenue, a neighbor said. The vandals marked the sidewalk, signs, a fence, homes, and vehicles.

Two vehicles parked in one woman’s driveway were marked with paint, including the license plate.

The vandals painted the slogans on her property without even knowing who she is or what she believes, the woman said, grateful her house had been spared and her family unharmed.

One resident, Mark Bates, said he misses feeling like he’s in a safe neighborhood on the quiet, tree-lined street in one of the city’s original neighborhoods. He recalled a rash of car thefts on the street last year and a drug-fueled beating of another resident.

“It looks like such a nice, quiet, beautiful neighborhood,” Bates said. “Oh, it is — until dark. And then you’d better start paying attention.”

Across the street from the back of Ella White, resident Travis Morasky hasn’t yet washed the new brown streak off his whtie picket fence. The vandalism is a black eye for the Black Lives Matter movement, he said, and perhaps was done for that reason.

“I just wish they were better artists,” he said lightly, noting his fence needs a new coat of paint, anyway.

The neighborhood has come together as they shared frustrations about the incident, although most neighbors remember that “everyone was a kid at one time,” he said.

Danny Mitchell, Alpena city councilman and area resident, was puzzled why the vandals would attack the school, which is well-lit at nighttime.

He hasn’t heard of race-related problems in the community and felt recent local marches promoting the Black Lives Matter movement were peaceful, so the vandalism came as a surprise

“I don’t know why they would even think that it was OK to do it,” Mitchell said.

At the school, a maintenance worker was scrubbing the letters off the cement block walls this morning. The paint, because of the warm weather, had soaked into the block and cured, he said, making it unlikely it would come off entirely.

Two security card readers at the school were also damaged and will have to be replaced if the paint can’t be removed from under the keypads, he reported.

An estimate of the cost of the damage hasn’t yet been determined, according to police. The total cost will determine whether the crime is charged as a misdemeanor or felony. Alpena Public Schools Superintendent John VanWagoner said the district has contacted its insurance company to review damage cleanup costs.

News Staff Writer Crystal Nelson contributed to this story.