A statue of George Floyd was vandalized with a white supremacist group’s logo less than a week after it was unveiled in Brooklyn.
According to the police, the Floyd statue was defaced on early Thursday with black spray paint, stenciled with the logo of Patriot Front — a white supremacist group.
The hate crime happened a day before Derek Chauvin, the officer who killed Floyd, is set to face sentencing.
In the security footage, four unidentified individuals approached the statue at around 3.40 am, and then walked away a short time later.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, the Patriot Front was established in 2017, and its members are focused on preserving what they say is America’s white, European identity.
The NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force is investigating the incident together with the department’s Racial and Ethnically Motivated Extremism unit.
City Council Member Farah Louis, who represents the Flatbush Junction, slammed the vandalism on Twitter.
“Today my office learned that the George Floyd sculpture at Flatbush Junction has been vandalized,” Louis tweeted. “This is a hate crime and totally unacceptable to the memory of Mr Floyd and to the Black community as well as our efforts to achieve #racialjustice and equality in America.”
Louis said that she is currently working with the artist who created the Floyd sculpture to figure out how to repair the damage.
On Twitter, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said that he is directing the New York State Police Hate Crimes Task Force to help investigate the incident.
“And to the group of ne-Nazis who did this, I want to be absolutely clear: get the h**l out of our state,” Cuomo said in a statement.
The statue was created by artist Chris Carnabuci. It was unveiled over the weekend and will stand for around three weeks in Flatbush before moving it to Union Square in Manhattan.
Carnabuci said that he is deeply saddened by the graffiti.
“I’m saddened by it,” Carnabuci told the New York Times. “I’m not completely shocked.”
Carnabuci said he expected that the sculpture would be defaced some time, but not so soon after its unveiling.
“It was so quickly afterward that it happened,” Carnabuci said. “Maybe that was a surprise.”
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