3rd Church Hit in Hate Crime : Vandalism: Swastikas and anti-religious graffiti are spray-painted on United Church of the Valley in La Crescenta.

For the third time in less than a year, a house of worship in the Glendale area has become the target of graffiti vandals scrawling anti-religious symbols and slogans, police said Monday.

Swastikas, inverted pentagrams, the symbol 666 and gang-type graffiti written in black ink were discovered at United Church of the Valley in La Crescenta last week.

A police officer who first responded to the crime originally classified it as mere vandalism, but on Monday police said they were adding it to the list of hate-motivated incidents.

“The writings are of an anti-Christian, anti-religious nature and that is a basis for classifying this as a hate crime,” said Chahe Keuroghelian, spokesman for the Glendale Police Department.

“Had this been ordinary graffiti, or had it not been on a religious center it would be classified as vandalism, but in this case it’s clear the church was the victim of a hate crime.”

Church officials could not be reached for comment Monday, but police said the graffiti, which was written on walls, desktops and bulletin boards in the church’s nursery and Sunday school room, was discovered by a staff member. It is believed to have been written sometime between July 9 and July 12.

No arrests have been made.

The case mirrors, on a smaller scale, a February incident in which vandals spray-painted large swastikas and anti-Christian icons on the 1,500-member First United Methodist Church of Glendale.

Four teen-agers were arrested in connection with that crime, and although police initially characterized the suspects as members of a Satanic cult, the hate crime charges against them were later dropped.

Last September, six large orange swastikas were painted on the exterior of Temple Sinai, Glendale’s only Jewish synagogue. No arrests have been made in connection with the crime.

Police are also classifying as a hate crime an incident on Sunday in which an Armenian resident reported that vandals scratched initials for “White Power” on her car windshield while she was shopping. The two latest incidents bring the number of hate crimes reported in Glendale this year to five, police said.