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Brookline police ask for help identifying suspect accused of tagging Teslas
“When confronted by one of the victims, the suspect seemed to claim he has the right to deface the property of others because it's his ‘free speech,’” Brookline police said.
Brookline police are asking for the public’s help identifying a person accused of tagging Tesla vehicles with Elon Musk stickers.
The Brookline Police Department said the suspect rode his bike around Brookline Village Sunday afternoon, tagging nearby Teslas with stickers bearing the automaker’s highly controversial CEO. Three people reported their cars were targeted, according to police.
“When confronted by one of the victims, the suspect seemed to claim he has the right to deface the property of others because it’s his ‘free speech,’” Brookline police said in a statement shared on social media. “We’d like to speak with the suspect so we can educate him on the difference between ‘free speech,’ and vandalizing property belonging to others.”
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The department also released a video clip of the suspect, who appears to be circling on a bicycle as bystanders confront him from behind the camera.
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“You guys can get a better car,” he can be heard saying. “If you can afford that car…”
Brookline.News reported the stickers featured an image of Elon Musk giving an apparent Nazi salute. According to the news outlet, Town Meeting member Dan Saltzman wrote to several community email lists and said his car was among those targeted.
“It’s the most counterproductive thing anybody could do is to go into the town of Brookline, where virtually everybody in the town supports the side of the politics that the people who did this are on,” Saltzman said, according to Brookline.News.
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The Brookline Police Department is asking anyone with information to contact Det. Ryan McCarthy at 617-730-2710 or [email protected].
The incident in Brookline comes one day after authorities in Littleton reported seven Tesla charging stations were intentionally set on fire early Monday. Tyngsborough police also responded to a report of “swastikas and hateful graffiti” written on the ground near Tesla charging stations last month. The graffiti included the phrase “normalize hate,” police said.
Tesla has been mired in controversy since Musk rose to prominence in the right-wing political sphere, taking on a central role in President Donald Trump’s White House as head of the nongovernmental Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
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