By Carol Tannenhauser
Several swastikas and at least one “Heil Hitler” were found scrawled in marker on four buildings and two telephone booths on Broadway between 103nd and 105th street on Wednesday morning. Lieutenant Matthew Bases of the 24th precinct said the incident is being investigated by the Hate Crimes Task Force, but “the investigation is ongoing and a determination as to whether or not this was a bias crime has not yet been made.”
Councilman Mark Levine told us a suspect was in custody and he “appears to be mentally ill,” but police did not immediately confirm that they had a suspect. Update: police say they have made no arrests and transferred the case to the Hate Crimes unit.
Amy M., who alerted us to the situation, wrote, “I was walking to the subway at about 10:15 a.m. when I first saw it on the CityMD building at 104th and Broadway on the east side of the street. I walked by again at about 2 p.m. and a man was scrubbing it from the wall using a spray bottle and brush. I noticed another man scrubbing something off a wall up the street outside the barber shop next to McDonald’s.”
Levine and Councilmember Helen Rosenthal, who represent the Upper West Side, issued a joint statement calling the acts “a sad reminder that we as a community must remain vigilant in the face of an elevated and hateful political climate.”
Hate crimes are up 115% in the city since the election, according to Rosenthal.
“I’ve felt sick about this all day,” Amy said. “I naively thought my accepting, diverse, friendly neighborhood was exempt from the hatred and intolerance fueling hate crimes in other parts of the country. It’s going to be a long, hard road ahead.”
A couple of weeks ago, a 1 train was taken out of service at Columbus Circle after swastikas were found on it.
If you are a victim or witness to a possible hate crime, call (888) 392-3644, the toll-free hotline launched by Governor Andrew Cuomo, following the election.
I know this is disturbing, but no less disturbing to me than the person who plastered the area with “9/11 Ha, Ha, Ha!” with a smiley face. Was that damage to property classified as a hate crime? There are people in the neighborhood who get a kick out of writing graffiti that they think will sicken the populace. It should be washed off quickly and move on.
Sloppy Work most likely done by a child with nothing better to do. Next time use a better marker . Wash it off and move on
Hopefully they aren’t counting the case of the Muslim woman who claimed she was attacked on the subway by men chanting “Trump,” which was exposed yesterday as being fabricated, toward those hate crime statistics. Then again, they should probably count what SHE did as a hate crime, considering it involved bias and was probably intended to incite racial unrest? And, not to make light of swastika graffiti or anything, but I have seen swastikas carved into subway plastic seats and such since moving to the city nearly 20 years ago. It’s not necessarily anything new, and something hooligans seem to unleash every now and then when perpetrating acts of vandalism. The post election hysteria is really getting to be a bit much, in my opinion.
“…not to make light of swastika graffiti or anything”
You should have stopped there
I haven’t at all seen any evidence that her attack was fabricated. Could you supply an article that shows that?
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/nyregion/manhattan-yasmin-seweid-false-hate-crime.html?_r=0
What’s sick is people are making this about Trump. Helen Rosenthal you are a disgrace. You’re no better than the subway liar who appeared before a magistrate yesterday in Lower Manhattan.
Whenever someone files a false report about Trump supporters, shouldn’t that count as a hate crime too?
Scott you made it about Trump not Helen.
Oh Helen is making it about Trump. Sure she uses dog whistles like “hateful political climate” but the message is clear. This is about demonizing Trump and his supporters and stirring up conflict.
… because of course there is no hateful political climate right now. and of course Trump didn’t use racism and ethnic hatred at all in his campaign. nope. nothing like that.
“keep moving, nothing to see here…”
thank you Helen Rosenthal!!
if anyone is interested in facts instead of fact-less rants (“99% [of hate crimes] are coming from the left”), i link to the Souther Law Centers compilation below. they track hate crimes nation wide. yes, there have been some anti-Trump hate crimes since the election: approx 2.4% of all the hate crimes. on the other hand, there have been hundreds of incidents against Muslims, immigrants, LGBT, blacks…
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/12/16/update-1094-bias-related-incidents-month-following-election
This is obviously a liberal who is upset about the results and trying to stir the pot.
Of course there’s hate Bruce. 99% of it coming from the left. Like the guy who got his face broken by a gang of Hillary supporters in Chicago. (This was an actual hate crime, involving actual perpetrators who were charged with actual crimes. Take note leftists. All of your alleged “hate crimes” curiously involve no victims and zero witnesses. How convenient)
I have lived in NYC all my life and have seen many, many swastikas, anti-Semitic, and racist graffiti. All disgusting! Now, suddenly, this becomes big news so that we can blame it on President Elect Trump. Thankfully, we don’t see hate crimes where lives are lost or building burned too often. But people, usually kids or deranged, have been writing disgusting things on walls for a long, long time — long before Donald Trump won. Hopefully the NYPD can catch this person and prevent future incidents.
40 years for me, and I’ve seen plenty of obscene graffiti but never once a swastika. That’s something I would have remembered.
I have lived on the UWS for 45 years and have been very active in every borough but Staten Island and have never seen swastikas anywhere. I’d suggest that while choosing to deny what is accelerating in this city right now, you make that a conscious choice. To deny that the Trump vitriol and hate- mongering of his campaign had nothing to do with this wave of scurrilous behavior is about as sensible as claiming the earth flat. I commend our elected leaders for their clear-eyed response.
53 years for me, and I don’t recall seeing swastikas or hitlerian messages, even at the height of really obscene graffiti.
There’s a disproportionate reaction to hate crimes which do not involve violence and crimes of violence which kill or severely injure victims. The latter are not as sexy.
I think it is much more likely that these things are being done by liberals trying to make Trump look bad, similar to the muslim woman that was arrested yesterday by NYPD for issuing a false criminal report against 3 Trump supporters who tried to remove her headscarf and said anti-muslim slurs against her in the subway — that never happened and she admitted yesterday that she made it up.
All one needs to do is ask why any Trump supporter would do such a thing and thereby reinforce liberal media’s false narrative of their candidate. Makes no sense. No, these things are being done by people who want to make Trump look bad, not his supporters. We don’t know for sure, but it makes a lot more sense to me.
False flags have always been around, but now more than ever. The thing is that liberal media doesn’t really care about them because they serve the narrative. That is why you didn’t hear about the muslim woman being arrested yesterday but when she made the false accusations they were all over the media.
What the police need to do is to charge people who plant false flags with the same hate crime type charge that a person would get otherwise. That might make these people think twice before doing such thing.
Again, I have no idea of whether this incident is false flag or not; just saying that i believe that most of these recent incidents are. Just my guess.
Completely agree with you SB. I, for one, am hoping there is security video that will be publicly released, showing who exactly scrawled this graffiti. I’d stake money on the person or persons responsible NOT being what the liberal media’s narrative around Trump and the election aftermath would have everyone assume. Also, let’s see if all of the media so eagerly reporting this story today do a follow up on it, IF it’s proven to be fabricated like the revelation yesterday about the Muslim woman “attacked by white Trump supporters” on the Subway. The latter story… well, unsurprisingly I read all about it when her accusation came out, but it seems any news about her ultimately being found out as a liar is buried in the media. Very disturbing. And to the people saying they have never seen swastika graffiti in NYC over the years, please get out more. You clearly don’t get out much.
You are correct. You won’t hear about false flagging on the major news stations though. First of all, it makes them look silly because when they reported the original incident, they reported the assumption that it was REAL as FACT. To then report that it was false flag embarrasses them. Secondly, it fits their desire to bring attention to acts of hate, regardless of whether it actually was an act of hate. In short, they do not care about the truth, like most people; they care about what the “truth” can do for them and their agenda. And yes, this is what is most disturbing about life today. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit to learn that just about everyone one of these incidents is false flag. The big lie at the center of all of this is that nazi types who support Trump do so because he is anti-semetic, which is idiotic. They like him because he wants to curb illegal immigration, which suits them just fine. Sort of the way that Pamela Geller, a very vocal and extremist jewish supporter of Trump supports him because he was one of the few politicians to say “radical islamic terrorism”. Trump probably wants absolute nothing to do with any of these extremists, yet because they vote for him, he apparently believes in all the insane and hateful things that they do. Guilt by someone voting for you. Hilarious…
Trump wants nothing to do with these extremists? Except for all the retweeting of white supremacists and neo-Nazis? Wake up.
Trump was retweeting COUNTLESS tweets by his supporters.
One day, tragedy struck, and he retweeted an innocuous campaign-supportive tweet penned allegedly by a nazi sympathizer (and that probably isn’t even true either, its just that i’m too tired to look into it, but for the sake of argument let’s say he/she was).
And from this, people like UWS-er conclude that Donald Trump countless prominent jews, both inside and outside of his cabinet, including many in Israel.
I didn’t vote for Trump, nor do I like him much. That being said, what is going on with liberals right now is called a shared psychosis. I used to be a democrat because I couldn’t stand the slanderous lies and name-calling told by so many in the republican party and their ugly mascot Rush Limbaugh, as well as their news arm, Fox TV. The democrats USED TO BE the voice of reason, respect. The democrats WERE the people who could converse about issues without resorting to character busters and name-calling. But now I can’t stand the democrats even more than the republicans. The democrats now have WAY outdone anything the republicans have EVER done. Their despicable campaign to destroy Trump rather than presenting their case to the people not only lost them the election, but it cost them their honor and led them down a very ugly path of hated, slander, and a full blown case of neglect for the truth. Go Rachel Maddow!, the queen of it all, the new and improved Rush Limbaugh!
I know! It’s so crazy that after the KKK, Stormfront, the “Neo” Nazis, David Duke and other known hatemongers all endorsed Trump, that a Trump supporter could have done it! Makes no sense at all!
Can you even hear how ridiculous you sound?
Some people have always done stuff like this (but I’ve lived on the UWS and never seen “Heil Hitler” anywhere). Some people have always made false claims. But to pretend that Trump’s campaign wasn’t resting solidly on xenophobia and demonizing minorities is living with your head under a rock.
A large group who clearly cannot handle the truth! They also seem to deny recorded speeches given by Trump making racist, xenophobic, sexist and seditious aspersions on the campaign trail. Oh, but he didn’t really mean those things even if he said them. And then there’s the public record where his multiple bankruptcies, failure to pay federal taxes, playing of the government, refusal to release his tax returns and those who he hired whom he never paid-How low this bar has gone. And still there are those doubting a huge rise in hate crimes? An astonishing lack of critical judgment, and wishful thinking.
You’re hysterical. “I have no evidence that these are false flag incidents, but I’m going to write paragraph after paragraph saying they probably are just because I think so and don’t want to consider the alternative.”
It is you, my friend, that has no evidence that these incidents ARE real. NONE. NADA. I am only saying that we shouldn’t assume that hateful graffiti is the handiwork of a hateful person and we should keep in mind that there are COUNTLESS examples, especially on university campuses of false flag incidents. Just yesterday, as was mentioned, a muslim woman was arrested for a false police report. The truth, whether or not it fits your convenient narrative, is that some of these incidents are false flags. Its sad, but it is a FACT. Statistics prove that. Sorry. And fwiw, your the one who sounds hysterical. Just my opinion.
While there is no doubt in my mind that there anti-semitic, nazi, far-right, racist bigots who are firmly in the Trump camp, the standard modus operandi of those kinds of people has never really been to grafiti up the UWS. They seem far more like the type who would leave hate filled leaflets on parked cars.
I think one thing we can all agree on is that neither Trump nor Clinton voters support Nazism or Hitler. Using these types of incidents to push a political agenda and demonize political opponents is just plain wrong, and people should know better.
People DO know better, but they do it anyway because destroying people is more important than the truth. Today, it’s all about propaganda and spinning to destroy people. Why do you think one of the richest people in the world, Jeff Bezos, wants to buy a newspaper? Media properties are a hot commodity right now; not because they make money, but because they can be used to prop up and justify ugly behavior (i.e., wars), partnerships with bad-behavior countries, and just generally to numb with disinformation the average US citizen who gets their daily dose of soundbites from MSNBC, HuffPost and Fox.
I’m shocked at the comments here. Seeing swastika grafitti is something we should all be outraged about, wherever we see it and regardless of who did it. Constant vigilance against anti-Semitism is important to not normalize it. I would have thought that was a no-brainer.
Agreed with Citizen. I’m shocked to see so many here minimize rascist graffiti. “Wash it off and move on” indeed. Is everyone here so hardened they disregard it as just another day on the UWS?
FWIW, kudos to the West Side Rag for making it into the “New York Today” section in today’s NYT.