It wasn’t until Mindy Brown got a text from her neighbor early Friday morning that she realized the Kamala Harris and Bob Casey Jr. signs were missing from her front yard. 

They’d been there when she went to bed Thursday night, but after the text informed her that they were gone, she went to check and found that all five had been taken. Not only that, many of her neighbors’ signs had also gone missing. 

“I don't think sign stealing is a new thing. I know that I've had signs stolen before, but I've never seen it to this extent, where it seemed to be zeroing in specifically on the Harris signs,” Brown told the Local. “Certainly people have done pranks, you might see a sign ripped off here and there, but this was just very deliberate and precise, they took all of them, they didn’t just take a few.” 

Brown was not the only person to see their signs go missing. Several others in Chestnut Hill and Mt. Airy reported that their signs were taken that night – including Ninth Ward Democratic Leader Jeff Duncan. Like Brown, Duncan noticed that not only were his signs missing on Friday morning, but so were the majority of signs in his neighborhood. Adding insult to injury, they’d taken the signs but left in place the ghostlike metal stands they’d been attached to. 

The rash of thefts was not limited to Chestnut Hill, Duncan said. He said his wife Kristen Regina, the Director of the Library and Archives at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, reported that all the curbside signs she’d previously seen during her commute to work were also missing. The signs that people had put behind a fence were still there. 

“She could see every single sign on her route, which goes through Chestnut Hill, down past St. Martin Fields Church onto Mermaid Lane and down through Mt. Airy had all been removed,” Duncan told the Local. “I've heard from some of my ward committee members that their signs were taken on some of the side streets as well.” 

A few weeks ago, Brown told Duncan that a group of six or seven teenagers went around her neighborhood stealing and destroying signs. However, she does not think the teenagers were involved in this recent incident. 

“They were just going around, bashing the signs and grabbing and running, and we were able to retrieve them because they were just trying to get rid of them quickly, so we found them around the corner,” Brown said. “My first thought Friday morning was maybe it's the same kids, but this was different because there was no indication of the signs anywhere.” 

Brown thinks that the teenagers would not have been able to pull off what happened Thursday night due to the extent of the thefts around the area. The teenagers were on foot when Brown spotted them a few weeks ago.

Brown’s front door Ring camera may have captured an image of the thieves, she said, but she has not yet viewed the footage. 

Both Duncan and Brown say they’re not daunted by the thefts. They’ve reached out to the Harris campaign for replacements. Neither Duncan nor Brown have contacted the police about the thefts. 

“It’s the kind of juvenile stunt that I’ve come to expect from the Republicans,” Duncan said. “We called the campaign today looking for a replacement so we're hoping to get some soon.”