Marking on more than the ballot

A Carson City couple who set up a video camera in the hopes of catching whoever was burglarizing their vehicles, instead caught a group of teens vandalizing political campaign signs, sheriff's candidate Bob Guimont said Monday.

Guimont, who is running against Ken Furlong in the Nov. 5 election, said when the couple discovered the vandalism in their yard Sunday morning and noticed all Guimont signs in their south Carson neighborhood had been damaged, they looked at their video and saw a group of seven teens spary-painting the placards.

"From that we figured out who the kids were and deputies called me at home Sunday and said they had the driver of the vehicle in the video," Guimont said.

The names of the man and woman who video taped the vandalism were not released.

Mark Dwyer, 18, of Carson City, was cited for misdemeanor destruction of property. Guimont said Dwyer was cooperative with police and helped locate the other six teens -- all 15 years old -- who also were cited. Their names were not released beause of their age.

"They got my signs all over town," Guimont said. "They got the signs all over the west side of town and all over the south end of town."

He said Dwyer admitted taking the group to at least 20 different sites. An estimated $600 to $800 in signs were spray painted or pulled up.

When Guimont noticed vandalism to his signs in the past people told him he should expect to lose some signs and he should have budgeted for it, but he refuses to see it that way.

Guimont, taking an unpaid leave of absence from his job as a Carson City deputy, said for now, the defaced signs will remain.

"I'm actually just too busy to clean these dang signs up. For now I'll leave it as is and concentrate on the campaign," he said.

Furlong, an investigator with the Nevada Division of Investigations, said some of his campaign signs also have been vandalized. But Furlong said he is not sure if any of the damage can be linked to the teens who were blamed for damaging his opponents' signs.

"We have experienced losses of signs in specific areas of town as well," he said.