News

Vandals Spray Neo-Nazi Graffiti in Another Brooklyn Park

By Daniel J. Solomon December 9, 2016

A worker at park between Brooklyn and Queens discovered swastikas and neo-Nazi graffiti scrawled on benches Thursday, the latest in a wave of hate crimes in New York City.

The vandalism at the Newton Creek Nature Walk included swastikas, the slogans “Go Home Refugees,” “Heil Hitler,” “Now begins 1000 years of TRUMP!, and insults directed at Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, reported DNAInfo. Police said they were investigating the incident, but have not reported arrests.

The New York Police Department says hate crimes in the city have spiked by more than a third since the Nov. 8 election. Vandals have left anti-Semitic messages and swastikas at another Brooklyn park named for the late Beastie Boys star Adam Yauch, in the lobby of New York state Sen. Brad Hoylman’s apartment building and in a residential building in the Hasidic section of Williamsburg.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the state police has created a new hate crimes investigations unit to tackle the issue.

“We will prosecute, to the fullest extent of the law, the perpetrators of any of this ugliness and divisiveness. Because it’s not happening in this state,” Cuomo promised, speaking at a black church in Harlem in November.

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

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