A construction sign meant to warn drivers about lane closures on Meridian Avenue East instead flashed a racial slur to commuters for roughly six hours, and Edgewood police are now asking the public to help identify the three people caught on video making the change. Investigators say the altered message appeared on the Washington State Department of Transportation reader board just after midnight on August 1 and stayed up until a Federal Way police officer spotted it and shut it off between 6 and 7 a.m. that same morning.
Video footage reviewed by investigators showed three people allegedly programming the slur onto the sign at 12:28 a.m. in the 200 block of Meridian Avenue, according to the News Tribune. The Edgewood Police Department said the footage showed a group of three, possibly juvenile, males tampering with the sign before leaving the area heading southbound. The reader board itself was part of a fish passage construction project put in place to advise drivers of lane closures, work tied to the broader Puget Sound Gateway Program, a multi-stage effort by the Washington State Department of Transportation to extend State Route 167 for freight mobility and stream ecology improvements.
Edgewood police began investigating once they determined the sign fell within the city's jurisdiction, and department leaders did not mince words about what the footage showed. Edgewood Police Chief Jason Youngman said this marked the first time his department had seen a reader board hijacked in this way, and he said he hopes it does not become a trend. The department condemned the suspected programming of the slur as a hateful act, stating that this kind of hate has no place in this or any community.
Why the Sign Sits on a Major Commuter Corridor
Meridian Avenue, also known as State Route 161, is a primary regional arterial connecting Edgewood to Puyallup and Federal Way, carrying heavy daily commuter and freight traffic through north Pierce County. The corridor was targeted for multimodal safety and traffic flow improvements under Edgewood City Council Resolution 24-0741, which underscores just how many drivers would have passed the altered sign during the morning commute before it was switched off.
Edgewood, a fast-growing suburb that reached roughly 13,810 residents in 2026 — an 11 percent jump since the 2020 census, per World Population Review — does not run its own police force. Instead, the city has contracted with the Pierce County Sheriff's Department for full police coverage since incorporating in 1996, meaning Chief Youngman serves as a contract police chief rather than heading an independent municipal department. Edgewood police also contract with South Sound 911 to handle non-emergency reporting and to serve as the city's records coordinator for public disclosure requests, so anyone seeking official case records or 911 recordings would go through that regional agency rather than a standalone city records office.
Felony Charges Could Stack on Top of Each Other
Because the reader board is maintained by WSDOT, accessing and reprogramming it can constitute a violation of RCW 9A.90.040, Washington's computer trespass statute, which is classified as a first-degree Class C felony when the targeted system belongs to a government agency. That statute alone carries potential prison time, and it exists separately from any bias-motivated charge. Washington's hate crime law, RCW 9A.36.080, makes an act motivated by racial bias a Class C felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, though prosecutors would need to establish specific intent and targeted intimidation for that charge to apply on top of the trespass count.
It remains unclear whether the suspects physically opened an unsecured control console on the portable sign or manipulated it some other way, a detail that could determine whether additional physical trespass or malicious mischief charges eventually get filed. Portable changeable message signs typically rely on password-protected control consoles, but unsecured control boxes have been shown to leave the devices vulnerable to manual programming overrides by anyone with physical access.
A WSDOT spokesperson said the agency will provide police with information that may assist the investigation. Edgewood police have asked anyone with information about the three suspects to contact the department directly.
Part of a Broader Pattern Statewide
The incident lands amid a wider pattern of bias-motivated crime tracked across Washington. According to hate crime reporting data compiled by the U.S. Department of Justice, the state recorded 623 hate crime incidents in 2023, with racial, ethnic, or ancestral bias accounting for nearly half of all reported cases. That statewide data flows through the National Incident-Based Reporting System, administered by the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, which compiles submissions from local agencies into its annual Crime in Washington reports.
For now, the case remains open, with Edgewood police relying on the released video and public tips to identify the three people seen on the footage before it can move toward any charging decision.
