There is growing outrage in Brooklyn and in Newark after two statues to honor George Floyd were targeted by vandals.
The George Floyd statue that was unveiled on Juneteenth at 1545 Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn was discovered vandalized around 7:20 a.m. Thursday.
They say the video captures them walking near the scene before and after the incident.
After news broke of the vandalism in Brooklyn, officials in Newark announced they were also investigating the defacing of the George Floyd statue at City Hall that occurred overnight.
In Brooklyn, George Floyd’s face and the statue’s pedestal were spray-painted black with the wording “PatriotsFront.Us” spray-painted in white — barely five days after it was unveiled.
Police say it happened in the middle of the night.
“I’m not gonna get emotional but to come up today, someone in the name of hate, came through the night and defaced it. In the night, when we couldn’t see their face. They snuck in. It’s really, really devastating,” said statue producer Lindsay Eshelman. “They seem to be very aligned with the things that happened at the Capitol. They seem to be incredibly focused on patriotism, but in my eyes. This was not ‘patriotism’ this was terrorism.”
The statue was unveiled on Juneteenth. It’s made of wood-specifically, 200 individual sheets of plywood perfectly cut and bound together. And it was defaced on the eve of the sentencing of George Floyd’s convicted killer, former Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin.
Floyd family spokesperson Courtney Nelson believes it’s no coincidence.
In Newark, police say the George Floyd statue there was defaced with graffiti. The face was also painted black and in white paint on the torso were the words: “LIFE…LIBERTY VICTORY PATRIOTFRONT.US”.
