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A 48-year-old man was arrested Friday on suspicion of vandalizing a Redondo Beach resident’s Black Lives Matter sign with racist slurs, police said.

Officers arrived at the 500 block of South Helberta Avenue around 8:10 a.m. Aug. 29 to find a resident’s homemade Black Lives Matter sign had been defaced with derogatory and racist language, the Redondo Beach Police Department said.

Randall Michael Walton, 48, is seen in a photo provided by the Redondo Beach Police Department on Sept. 4, 2020.
Randall Michael Walton, 48, is seen in a photo provided by the Redondo Beach Police Department on Sept. 4, 2020.

“Based on the language used to deface the sign, Redondo Beach Police Department investigated this incident as a hate crime,” police said in a news release.

The resident had surveillance video that captured the sign being defaced.

A tipster told police the vandal was Randall Michael Walton, whom officers found and arrested at his Redondo Beach home Friday.

Walton was booked on suspicion of vandalism and interference with exercise of civil rights because of actual or perceived characteristics of victim, according to the department.

The Black Lives Matter sign went up in the Redondo Beach residential neighborhood earlier this summer and has since been the target of a string of vandalism incidents, as well as an outpouring of support, the Daily Breeze reports.