Contentious election leads to heated actions: Hinckley woman reports mailbox, political sign blown up

HINCKLEY — While Hinckley's Barbara Cumming was sitting in her house Saturday night, she heard a loud explosion. After going out to investigate, she found that her mailbox — which had been stuffed with one of her "Biden/Harris 2020" yard signs — had been blown up. Cumming immediately called the police, though she said she didn't see any people or cars driving away after hearing the explosion. "The sign had been folded up and put inside, so it was a little charred and torn up," Cumming said. "You can still tell it was a political sign. They left the wire in the ground (and) just lifted the sign." This isn't the first time Cumming has had one of her signs taken out of her yard as just days before, someone else had stolen her other sign. Similarly, Cumming did not see who took the sign. Hinckley police Chief David Centner said that barring any new information coming in about who might have done this, the department has investigated the incident all it can. Cumming did not have any surveillance cameras on her property. "(The suspect) probably used an M80, or something like that, to blow up the mailbox and the political sign," Centner said. "(It's not bizarre) for this time of year. It happens, unfortunately. People don't have anything better to do with their time than to do things like this." Centner said should anyone come forward or be found out to have been involved, charges could include possessing a dangerous ordinance, criminal damaging and "a number of crimes that fit the circumstances." As upset as she was at her property being vandalized, Cumming said she was also disappointed and saddened that politics have gotten to this point. "It's sad that people can't have and hold their opinions and have them be respected," she said. "I'm certainly not going around and ripping out political signs because I don't agree with them." Though Cumming has seen, perhaps, the more extreme side of people disagreeing with a political stance, she is not alone in having her signs targeted. Citizens throughout Medina County have taken to social media or gone directly to the police to report the theft of their signs. One such citizen is Brunswick Ward 4 Councilman Anthony Capretta. According to an Aug. 27 police report, Capretta alleged that his next-door neighbor took two of his "Trump 2020" signs from his privacy fence and threw them into his yard. When contacted by police, the neighbor admitted to moving the signs. Capretta did not press charges, but did issue a cease-and-desist order. "I have gotten so many calls from people in my ward that have gotten their signs stolen," Capretta said. "Both Biden signs and Trump signs. Have I ever seen this before? No. This is crazy how people are thinking. You can't even put a sign up without someone stealing it and going crazy. I've been around politics for 40 years … and I've never seen it this bad or this crazy." Many share that view that this election cycle has brought out the worst of the worst, and that never before has the county seen such divisiveness or contention. One person that feels slightly differently is John Green, former director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute for Applied Politics at the University of Akron. Green, along with Cumming, point to the 1960s — specifically the 1968 presidential race between Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey — as, perhaps, an even more contentious time in the country. "It's been a long, long time," Green said. "(1968) was a pretty contentious election. You had the war in Vietnam … Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in the spring and so was Bobby Kennedy, and there were race riots. Hopefully, 2020 won't be as bad, but it has some of the same elements. "President Trump is very unpopular in some corners and other people really like him. Joe Biden is not the favorite of a lot of people either. You've got the Black Lives Matter movement and the issue with the police, the coronavirus, which has everybody on edge, and then you're having a lot of problems with the economy because of coronavirus. It's very contentious." Green credits much of the current hostility to a combination of all those things, though he said the majority of people will not act on such thoughts. Despite that, he said the overall view of the outcome of the election is vastly different than it has been in years past. The fear and anger from thinking about the opposing candidate winning, Green said, can manifest themselves positively — making more calls and speaking out more in favor of your candidate — and negatively — stealing signs and blowing up mailboxes. "Oftentimes, elections are close because both candidates are acceptable," Green said. "People might prefer the Republican or the Democrat, but they think of both of them as honorable people and they're not going to be too sad if their side loses. They're going to figure that the other party's leader is a good person. "You can have really close elections but there is not the antagonism that we see this year. (Before) people were like, 'No matter who wins, the country will be OK.' Whereas, right now, a lot of people believe that if their side doesn't win, the country is not going to be OK. We're in a very difficult moment." Cumming said she won't let last week's incident deter her from making her voice heard, nor will she let it intimidate her. She said she has several more signs on the way that she is going to put back in her yard. "It was an attempt at intimidation and they're barking up the wrong tree," Cumming said. Contact reporter Jack Kopanski at (330) 721-4063 or jkopanski@medina-gazette.com.