Police are continuing to investigate last month’s vandalism at Saccarappa Cemetery.

Police Chief Paul McCarthy said police have been conducting increased patrols of the area and there have been no further incidents of criminal mischief or vandalism at the cemetery, which is the oldest cemetery in the city.

Last month, vandals struck at Saccarappa, tipping over some of the oldest gravestones in the city. Some of the graves had been pushed over. Gravestones were lying on the ground off their bases, and a large obelisk on one grave had also been toppled over.

In addition, there were beer cans littering the ground. One woman, who was visiting the cemetery looking for the graves of relatives, found a high school yearbook among the beer cans and liquor bottles littering the ground and turned it in to police.

McCarthy said Friday that police believe the person who left the yearbook at the cemetery was not involved in vandalizing the gravestones.

The Public Services Department has gone through the cemetery and righted the stones that had been toppled over. The question of who is responsible for the expensive job of fixing the broken stones still remains to be settled.

John Emerson, deputy director of the Public Services Department, said the department is still in the process of assessing the damage to the various gravestones. He said by state law and local ordinances, the city is responsible for the maintenance for all veterans’ graves in public and private cemeteries in the city, and because of this, the city would be responsible for repairing those stones. He said the department is currently in the process of looking at the graves that were damaged and determining which of those graves belonged to veterans.

All other gravestones are the responsibility of the families or heirs of the individuals buried there, Emerson said. The problem at Saccarappa, he said, is some of the graves are so old, there are no members of the family or any heirs left to fix the stones. Emerson said the Public Services Department is scheduled to meet with the cemetery trustees sometime at the end of this month to look at a possible volunteer effort to repair some of the stones that were damaged.

The Public Services Department is responsible for the maintenance of three cemeteries in the city. Besides Saccarappa Cemetery, the city also maintains Woodlawn Cemetery on Stroudwater Street and Highland Lake Cemetery, which is just off Route 302.

Anyone with any information on the vandalism to the cemetery is asked to call the Westbrook Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division at 854-0644.