Crime in Kentucky has increased, over the past few months, with as little as our graffitied town sign, to something as big as gun violence and bank robbery. Recently, multiple areas have been graffitied in Bourbon County, including the BCHS Champion sign, the CVS, Bourbon Heights, Traditional Bank right by the Bourbon County Middle and High School, and more.

To better understand the current state of vandalism in Paris, the Le Petit Colonel interviewed Mr. Morgan Adkins, the Bourbon County High School principal.

“Mr. Adkins, the Bourbon County Championship sign had been vandalized?”

“Yes.”

“It was graffitied, correct?”

“Yes.” 

“What exactly was written on the sign?”

“From what I saw they had drawn a crown with the very bubbly, block lettering. There was the name of, I’m assuming, a gang on one sign and the picture of the crown on the other.”

“Were the vandals caught?”

“Yes, they did catch somebody who was doing it around town, and I believe they were grouped in with that gang as well.”

“Was the [Traditional] bank vandalized as well?”

“Yes, they had targeted the bank, as well as CVS, I mean there were probably 5 or 6 locations around town, including our sign.”

“Who has to clean the signs?”

“As of right now I’m not sure if things have been cleaned up any more than the graffiti was covered up. I don’t know what the process is going to be, my guess is that maintenance is probably going to try to look into on how to clean it up, if it can be cleaned up. I mean there is a possibility that it doesn’t come off. But yea, I would say maintenance will probably be the ones to deal with that task unfortunately.” 

For additional comments, we went to our AP Coordinator and Career Counselor, Ms. Hoskins. 

“What is your opinion on vandalism in our schools?”

“On vandalism as a whole, I think that it is disrespectful to ruin things that don’t belong to you. I think that there are other ways to get out that extra energy.

“Why do you think people vandalize?” 

“Uh just because or to send a message, but ultimately it varies from person to person. Like a lot of vandalism is trying to send a message and then trying to figure out what that message is, at the end of the day it’s still just disrespect the someone else’s property.”

“What do you think about not having the perpetrator clean it?”

“Yea, no I don’t think that’s fair for them [the non-perpetrator] to have to clean it up. Especially when what their cleaning up is someone else’s disrespect to their hard work”