LA police probe fire, vandalism at Japanese Buddhist temple

Surveillance video caught a man jumping the security fences at the Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple on Thursday night, smashing a 12-foot-high glass window with a rock, yanking a pair of metallic lanterns off their concrete bases and lighting two wooden lantern stands on fire, the temple's head priest told the Los Angeles Times.

“Your first feelings are those of disappointment and sadness to see what happened,” said the Rev. Noriaki Ito. “I don’t know the motives, but it looks like we were targeted. The only relief I find is that no one was hurt.”

The incident comes amid a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans. The advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate said it tracked 245 reports of coronavirus-related discrimination against people of Asian descent in Los Angeles County from March through December last year. They included verbal harassment, physical assaults or refusal of service at at business.

Los Angeles Police Department Capt. Stacy Spell said it was too early to label Thursday’s vandalism a hate crime because the investigation is in the early stages.

Ito said the vandalism is part of a troubling pattern of security breaches at the 1 1/2-acre sanctuary during the last two weeks.