By Elise Craig/BERKELEY  Both Shirley Dean and Tom Bates’s mayoral campaigns have spent the last few days putting up lawn signs, only to have many of them stolen or torn apart.

According to Bates’s campaign manager Ariana Casanova, the campaign has put up somewhere between 100 and 200 signs per day, and all of them have been removed or destroyed between six and nine a.m. the next morning.

“They get kicked, torn or covered by other signs, predominantly on San Pablo Avenue near McDonald’s, which is the border from Oakland, all the way down to Gillman,” she said.

Yesterday, two Bates campaign volunteers called the police after a man came and started to take down all the signs they had put up. The police came out to talk to the man, and for the next 12 hours, no other signs went missing, Casanova said. Last night, Casanova put up another 100 signs between nine and 11 p.m. When she went back at two a.m., they had been taken down.

Volunteers believe that there are three different men involved—one on foot, one on a bicycle, and one in a small car.

Dean has had similar problems.

“We have in fact observed a person who took a Shirley sign down and replaced it with a Bates sign. We took that person’s license number down and turned it into a police report. I understand it is illegal to do that on public property,” she said.

Signs have also been removed from out of people’s front yards, and on one street, all of Dean’s signs and City Council Candidate Sophie Hahn’s signs were removed, Dean said.

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