‘Satan 666’: Graffiti defaces Duval County Courthouse

Duval County Courthouse. [Photo: Beth Rousseau/Action News Jax]

As the sun came up Tuesday morning, it revealed the most expensive public building ever commissioned in Jacksonville had been defaced.

“Someone appears to have spray painted ‘Satan 666’ across the columns of the Duval County Courthouse,” Action News Jax reporter Beth Rousseau tweeted.

VANDALISM | Someone appears to have spray painted ‘Satan 666’ across the columns of the Duval County Courthouse. @ActionNewsJax @WOKVNews pic.twitter.com/gg17znpDqe

— Beth Rousseau (@WFLABeth) May 19, 2020

The choice of the courthouse as a target was interesting, as it still stands as the most expensive and one of the most controversial capital investments in city history, with a story more interesting than the late-night tag job.

Originally expected to cost $190 million when contemplated in 2000 as part of the Better Jacksonville Plan, the total budget ballooned to $350 million by 2007.

The city’s own verbiage offers a cautionary tale for capital referendums, such as the one the Duval County School Board is pushing this year:

“The increase was needed because the plan for the ‘courthouse project’ changed significantly between the time the Plan’s budgets were created for the referendum to the time voters approved the Plan.”

Since deciding to build a new courthouse, the city has suffered through a number of lean periods, where recessions prompted austerity measures for years. The 2008 economic crash had effects that still resonate through city government, including attrition in workforce and capital spending. It remains to be seen what effect the economic crash of 2020 will hold in the long term, but the workforce again could be affected.

Though the choice of the courthouse as a target for even a sloppy tag job may have been surprising, there are other recent examples of vandalism targeted to make a point of some sort.

In 2017, as the Florida Times-Union reported, Confederate monuments were defaced in downtown’s Hemming Park and the Springfield neighborhood.

However, the red spray paint is where the similarities end. The monument defacement was topical, amidst a larger, since-shelved debate about what to do with memorials to Confederate ideals.

Satan 666? If the perpetrators are ever found, it will be interesting to hear their message.