Police are investigating the burning of a rainbow flag at the Pasadena Buddhist Temple earlier this week as a possible hate crime, authorities said on Wednesday, April 26.
“It was an act of hate, and it was arson,” said Gregory Gibbs, the temple’s resident minister.
The temple, at 1993 Glen Ave., had two rainbow or pride flags and two Black Lives Matter flags, all four created by local artists and displayed on the gates.
“We are opposed to bullying — that’s why we have the flags,” Gibbs said.
Gibbs described the burned rainbow flag, reduced to blackened shreds, had been about two feet tall and three feet wide with an estimated value of $1,000.
Officers went to the temple Tuesday after the reported vandalism, said Lt. Monica Cuellar, spokeswoman for Pasadena police. They had not yet identified a suspect.
A neighbor saw the rainbow flag burning around 7 p.m. on Monday and put it out, Gibbs said: “But she didn’t see the perpetrator.”
The flags had been up for several years. Until recently, no one had complained about them.
Then, a couple of of weeks ago, a man who said he lives in the neighborhood showed up and asked that the rainbow and BLM flags be taken down. The temple declined to do so.
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