Investigators say 57 swastikas were discovered across the park Wednesday morning, just days after 16 more were found painted along playground slides and court walls. While much of the graffiti has been cleaned, streaks of red and blue paint still mark walls and playground structures.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was my playground. I played there 70 years ago,\u201d said resident Joe. \u201cAny kind of hate , antisemitism, anti-Jew, anti-Muslim, anti-Christian, anti-Black – it\u2019s wrong. It\u2019s just not right.\u201d<\/p>\n
For families who frequent the park, the discoveries have been deeply unsettling.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m shocked,\u201d said resident Lylia. \u201cI have three children who play there all the time after school. Now I make sure we go outside together, because I\u2019m worried.\u201d<\/p>\n
The incidents have drawn swift condemnation from city leaders. Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the vandalism \u201csickening,\u201d while City Council Speaker Julie Menin announced new legislative action aimed at preventing future hate crimes, including plans to install security cameras at the park as part of a broader five-point initiative to combat antisemitism.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are moving bills that create safe zones around houses of worship and schools,\u201d Menin said. \u201cWe\u2019ll be voting on them February 12th, and we\u2019re moving very quickly because this is an urgent crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police say two 15-year-old boys were arrested Thursday afternoon. One faces charges of aggravated harassment and hate-crime criminal mischief. The other is charged with aggravated harassment.<\/p>\n
City Councilmember Eric Dinowitz says enforcement must be paired with education.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to make sure incidents like this don\u2019t happen again, through education and prevention,\u201d Dinowitz said.<\/p>\n
Investigators say they are continuing to search for a possible accomplice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Investigators say 57 swastikas were discovered across the park Wednesday morning, just days after 16 more were found…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[7544,98,100,99,474,15582,10685,9,24,63,3580,18502],"class_list":["post-109199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-borough-park","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-gravesend","tag-hate-crime","tag-hate-crimes","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-playground","tag-swastikas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}