HALLOWELL (AP) – Police are investigating the appearance of signs with the letters “KKK” in dozens of locations along a popular walking and bicycling trail in Hallowell and Farmingdale.

Steve Wessler, executive director of the Center for Hate Violence, says he was riding his bicycle on the Kennebec River Rail Trail over the weekend when he came across the defaced signs.

Wessler says the appearance of the scrawled letters “KKK” – shorthand for Ku Klux Klan – is part of a series of disturbing incidents in Maine that followed the election of Barack Obama as president.