Projo Politics Blog

img alt="swanseasigns.jpg" src="http://www.beloblog.com/ProJo_Blogs/newsblog/swanseasigns.jpg" width="512" height="341" />
Journal photo / Steve Szydlowski
Swansea candidate Michael Berube says his campaign signs were being stolen from a place on Route 6 at the intersection of Maple Street, where lots of local candidates have Bitheir signs.

SWANSEA, Mass. -- Candidates have long bemoaned the swiping or defacing of their campaign signs during election seasons.

Rare, though, is the candidate who captures a sign thief in the act, in broad daylight, and on film.

That’s just what Michael G. Berube says he managed to do today when he and a former local TV cameraman staged a low-level dragnet to catch the suspected perpetrator.

Berube, a candidate for reelection to the Swansea Board of Assessors in Monday’s annual town election, says his signs have been snatched the last two weeks with some regularity from a Route 6 strip of land popular with locals promoting their candidacies. He says other candidates’ signs have been stolen, too.

Berube says he pinpointed morning rush hour as the time the culprit was apparently filching his signs.

So this morning, Berube and Frank Clynes set up their surveillance. It wasn’t exactly top-secret: Finding no place to surreptitiously record the theft-in-progress, the two simply stood across the street, cameras rolling.

-- Journal staff writer Meaghan Wims

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