Photo courtesy of WOWT.
A memorial of George Floyd in New York City’s Union Square was vandalized on Oct. 4. According to PIX 11 News, a man dressed like a skateboarder defaced the statue with silver paint around 10:00 a.m.
The grotesque incident shows a man in New York’s Union Square hanging around the George Floyd statue with a backpack. He can be seen removing something from the bag before throwing silver paint on the figure’s face as he skates by in broad daylight.
This isn’t the first time the statue was defaced. Just days after an unveiling in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, on Juneteenth, the statue was vandalized. The statue was spray-painted with black paint. The state was also defaced with the white supremacist slogan “Patriot Front.”
Around the same time, a different statue of Floyd was vandalized in Newark, New Jersey, after being unveiled at City Hall.
The George Floyd statue in Union Square is part of an art installation that includes the late civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis and Breonna Taylor.
Taylor was murdered in 2020 by the police in Louisville, Ky., in her apartment during a botched raid. Floyd was murdered by the police the same year in Minneapolis, Minn. The art installation is called “See Injustice” and was created by Chris Carnabuci and Confront Art. The unveiling of the three statues happened just days before the incident on Sept. 30.
The NYPD claimed that the Hate Crime Task Force was investigating the vandalism in Union Square. They also said they were
investigating back in June when the statue was defaced in Brooklyn.Video of the man shows him leaving via the west side of the park and heading north. Despite the vandals being on tape, the police have been unable to make any arrests. Police ask anyone with pertinent information to contact Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or the NYPD.