A Latino LGBTQ+ youth center near Los Angeles is seeking help finding the perpetrators of a nasty form of vandalism directed against it: dog poop bags tossed at their building.

For the last several months, employees arriving at the Mi SELA youth center in the city of Bell have been welcomed with the smell of dog feces emanating from the biodegradable bags lobbed at the building’s entrance and above it.

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This family’s house was targeted with hatred. So they turned it around in a surprising way.

“It smelled really bad yesterday. It was not a pretty sight whatsoever,” said Mi SELA’s programs manager, Sanva Lojero.

Standing over a collection of ten bags of the discarded poop just swept from the building’s awning, Lojero told NBC Los Angeles, “This is a youth resource center, so we have clients coming in each day and I don’t want them to feel like they’re getting harassed.”

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“What if it does escalate in the future?” she asked.

Mi SELA, a partnership between the Los Angeles LGBT Center and the Latino Equity Alliance, provides youth clubs, community-building workshops, and cultural and legal resources to the LGBTQ+ community of South Los Angeles.

So far, security cameras mounted on the building’s exterior haven’t caught the vandals in the act, and police say they’re unable to pursue the perpetrators — or identify their motive — without more evidence.

“We’ve been checking cameras, we’ve been repositioning cameras to see if we could catch the person that’s doing it. It seems like this person or people are aware of where the cameras are positioned, though, so that’s just been making it a little harder,” Lojero said.

The Latino Equity Alliance, for one, is calling out the vandalism as deliberate and hate-motivated.

“This senseless harassment is abhorrent and unacceptable. In 2025, it is shocking that young people and community organizations continue to face such targeted hate and intimidation. While law enforcement has emphasized that action cannot be taken without catching the perpetrators in the act, that does not diminish the urgent need for vigilance, awareness, and a public stance against hate in our communities,” a statement from the group on Instagram read.

LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn condemned the vandalism as well, and pledged a $2500 grant from the county to add more cameras to the building’s security system in an effort to identify who is lobbing the poop bags.

“The fact that this person is going out of their way to do this says everything about them and nothing about our LGBTQ community in Southeast L.A.,” Hahn said in a statement.

Anyone with information about the vandalism is encouraged to contact the Bell Police Department at (323) 585-1245.

Said program manager Lojero: “This just proves why we need to do the work we do. We’re not going anywhere. We’re going to still keep providing resources. It just sucks when we see things like this, but the work goes on.”

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