A memorial to fallen special operations service members located inside MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, has been vandalized with pink spray paint and is temporarily closed off to installation patrons as expensive cleanup efforts are underway.
The Special Operations Memorial, which is inside MacDill’s gates, was likely vandalized sometime Tuesday evening, Troy Daland, the president of the memorial foundation’s board of directors, told Mlitary.com.
Images of the scene Thursday provided to Military.com showed a working dog statue covered in pink spray paint and the main statue of a service member was covered in a blue tarp. Since-deleted pictures of the scene shared briefly on social media showed a giant pink-colored, spray-painted X on the pavers of the memorial, as well as seemingly pink confetti and paper sprinkled around the memorial. It was covered with police tape on Thursday.
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“It’s tragic,” Daland, a retired senior master sergeant who was a former Air Force Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape specialist, told Military.com in an interview Thursday. “This is not government funded. This is all private citizens donating to this memorial.”
Daland said cleaning the memorial will likely cost upward of $10,000, and restoration efforts have already started. MacDill Air Force Base has been home to U.S. Special Operations Command, otherwise known as SOCOM, since 1987.
“At the end of the day, it is frustrating, because a lot of people use that as a place of reflection for their teammates or their families, from the Gold Star families,” Daland said. “It’s kind of our sacred area for special operations.”
Col. Allie Weiskopf, a SOCOM spokesperson, said the base’s security forces were looking into the incident and did not have other details to provide.
To see the memorial, a patron would have to have approved base access, such as a service member, dependent, civilian employee or retiree with proper identification or be escorted by someone who was cleared to enter the installation.
The Special Operations Memorial has several walls inscribed with the names of fallen service members as well as benches for patrons to read, observe and reflect on their sacrifice. The wall of names was not vandalized, Daland said.
The main statue of the memorial has been at the location since 1996, he said. It has been expanded significantly in the years following the post-9/11 wars to include more names of special operators.
“We’ve already taken steps to clean it up, so we’ll get it clean,” retired Navy Vice Adm. Sean Pybus, the chairman of the memorial’s board of directors, told Military.com on Thursday. “I think there’s a better than average chance of figuring out who the perpetrators were.”