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Late last week, Cemetery Com-issioner David Nuvallie found that dozens of the grave markers had been knocked off their pedestals, broken in half or uprooted from the ground.
"We've had this happen in the past, but I really believe this is an imitation of what happened in Pittsfield," he said.
The cemetery is home to many older graves dating back to the 1880s and 1910s, and Town Administrator William Ketcham said that may have been why they were targeted.
"These were mostly the older stones that are held up by their own weight as opposed to using metal rods or to being cemented on," he said. "They could just be slid off with enough force."
Newly appointed Selectman Chairman Joseph C. Solomon said he was very upset about such vandalism happening in his town.
"It has happened in North Adams as well as Pittsfield, there's obviously a larger issue out there," he said. "I'll be talking to the police chief tomorrow morning about it. But it's something that we really
Nuvallie said the town will try to prop back up some of the smaller, lighter headstones, but there is not a lot that can be done to fix the rest.
"We haven't repaired any of them yet because they're technically private property," he said. "People's homeowner's insurance should cover it for repairs."
Larry Clairmont, chairman of the Cemetery Commission, said the commission is looking for some state and federal grant money to fix up these as well as other overturned and broken headstones in the cemetery, but it has been hard to find the funds. He said most grant money for the cemeteries does not allow for headstone repair, because they're private property.
"The unfortunate thing this time is a lot of the damaged ones are older ones," he said. "There is no family to pay for the repairs."
Clairmont said the cemetery is not secured and that people, especially kids, cut through it all the time on the way down to the town's main roads. While the commission agreed that it was too soon to place blame, they said they wanted students to be taught more respect for burial grounds.
"We need to teach our students that cemeteries are sacred places and need to be respected and taken care of," member Bob Chiempa said. "They need to think how they would treat it if it was their family's plot that was desecrated."
Clairmont said he expects police patrols to increase in the area and would also like to see neighbors be more active in watching the cemetery. Several of the toppled headstones were perched on the tops of hills in the graveyard and are easily visible to surrounding buildings.
"We'd like there to be some stiffer penalties for vandalizing a grave yard," he said. "That way, youths or whoever is responsible will have in the back of there minds that there are real consequences."
Ketcham said the Adams Police Department has been notified of the situation and are conducting an investigation, but Nuvallie said there wasn't much the cemetery commission could do to stop future vandalism.
"I can't see what we can do short of putting cameras up. And there's no power out there, so that will be hard."
However, Ketcham said that option was actually on the table.
"We haven't really decided how we're going to deal with it, but there's a number of things we can do," he said. "Setting up cameras is one possibility. The police have several portable cameras that we could use. But we have to look into it more."
