Confession: my original Police Scanner Tuesday post I wrote Monday night and scheduled to be published in the morning when everyone would wake up and immediately check their phones.

Well, I wrote too soon, because what we woke up with was mass vandalism at a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri. About a hundred to one hundred and fifty tombstones in the historic Chesed Shol Emeth were overturned. Cemetery officials reported that, because many of the stones had been knocked onto their inscriptions, it would take some time to identify and contact the families affected.

It seems almost inevitable that this is a hate crime, given that Jews are still the religious group most targeted for such attacks in the United States. (African-Americans are the most-targeted racial group, according to FBI statistics). Moreover, since the beginning of the year, nearly 70 bomb threats have been made to almost 60 different Jewish, with 11 being made Monday morning alone.

If there is any good to come out of this, it is that two Muslim activists have raised almost $20,000 in donations towards repairing the cemetery since news of the desecration broke. The Muslim community, like the Jewish, has seen an upsurge in attacks since November of last year.