A MAJOR clean-up was launched in Falmouth on Monday after residents in the Dell area of the town awoke to find 'anti-fascist' graffiti plastered all over their property and commercial premises.

The graffiti was sprayed on people's fences, on the side of businesses, including the Dell Garage and railway station and over the Tesco Express store on Discovery Quay.

Local people started cleaning off or painting over the grafitti while town centre manager Richard Gates said the town council team had been on the case with this all morning and into the afternoon.

"The damp conditions are hindering locations that require repainting but some has already been removed, further checks have taken place across the town for other locations that have been targeted.

"Police have been updated and will be further tomorrow. Various other partners or private addresses have been informed and CCTV will be checked. Additional work will be taking place over the coming days subject to weather while ensuring we are Covid compliant."

Lynda Chapman who runs the Dell Garage in Avenue Road with her husband Alan says they have been there for over 30 years and never seen anything like it before.

She said her husband had left the garage on Saturday night at 5pm and had returned on Monday to the find the side of their building sprayed.

“It is very offensive,” she said. “It’s all over the side of our garage it has the ‘F’ word and ‘fascist’ written on it. 

“We went for a walk after Alan phoned me and if you go into the car park it is all over the car park information sign all up both sides of the wall leading up to the station. On one side it says ‘Kill Tories’. As you can see from the pictures some of it is extremely offensive.”

“It is so disappointing, Falmouth has been so spoilt. I just think ‘What is going on?’ The world’s crazy and we are trying to run a business, we employ people we do Mots.”
Artist Stevie Foley, said she had graffiti was sprayed all over her fence.

“It’s just horrendous,” she said. “But it’s not just me, it’s all over the town. They were using orange, green and black it’s just all over. They were doing all the signs. I noticed the one down the Maritime Museum that’s all been sprayed green. It’s just stupid.”

She said she had had to clean graffiti off her fence back in September and she was 100 per cent sure it was the same people who did it last time.

“People were saying ‘oh the students were back again’ but I said it’s not students, it’s your 14, 15-year old bored kids. I’d like to catch them.” 

She said the night before the vandalism was discovered her son’s partner told her she had heard someone interfering with their fence at around 11.30pm on Sunday.

She said it looks like they rampage through the town and then they catch the train because it always ends up at the station end. She said Tesco Express were forced to clean it all off the side of their windows. 

PC Matthew Cummins from Falmouth Police told a meeting of Falmouth Town Council on Monday that they had received reports of criminal damage and would be checking CCTV in the area and looking for any opportunity to ID the suspects.

He said graffiti historically is very difficult to detect. People don’t tend to do it when other people are around. “We will be doing some house to house in key locations and checking the CCTV,” he said.

Falmouth mayor Steve Eva said he had been in contact with the university just in case it was students, although he didn’t believe it was students but that they were of a student age because some of the messaging was beyond children

He said he’d been touch with the university and they were going to send out a letter warning that if any students were found responsible they would be dealt with severely.