{"id":387945,"date":"2026-10-30T15:34:29","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T15:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/387945\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T15:34:29","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T15:34:29","slug":"a-halloween-display-of-a-lynching-in-brooklyn-sparks-an-arrest-but-was-it-harassment-or-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/387945\/","title":{"rendered":"A Halloween display of a lynching in Brooklyn sparks an arrest, but was it harassment or art?"},"content":{"rendered":"

An artist\u2019s Halloween display showing a lynching in a tree outside his Brooklyn home was designed to symbolize how minorities are being abused in the U.S. \u2014 but the work outraged neighbors, and investigating cops charged Aaron Mealy with aggravated harassment<\/a>, the Daily News has learned.<\/p>\n

Mealy, a Black artist, explained his depiction of a hanging was meant to evoke anger about how Blacks were still treated in the U.S. <\/a>The display, which included a noose, was found hanging from a tree on the sidewalk outside his home on Herkimer St. near Buffalo Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, still lynching n\u2014-s in 2026,\u201d the 35-year-old Mealy wrote on a paper sign posted on the tree the body was hanging from, according to police<\/a>. \u201cHappy Halloween.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is art,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

His neighbors disagreed and called police, who arrested Mealy for aggravated harassment on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Mealy violated city law, which says a noose, \u201ccommonly exhibited as a symbol of racism and intimidation,\u201d cannot be placed on property without the owner\u2019s consent. The city owned the tree Mealy\u2019s display was hanging from.<\/p>\n

When cops arrived, Mealy told officers that he \u201cwould like people to know that people are still being lynched and that [he] does not care how people really feel because\u2026art is meant to evoke feelings,\u201d according to the criminal complaint.<\/p>\n

Mealy was released without bail. He referred all calls to his Legal Aid attorney.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Mealy is a Black man who made a political statement on Halloween to call attention to the racism and violence Black people continue to face in this country, from police brutality and discriminatory policing to mass incarceration,\u201d Legal Aid said in a statement. \u201cRather than criminalizing his expression, we should be confronting the systemic racism and violence that prompted it. This was an act of political expression, not a hate crime.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Legal Aid Society will vigorously defend Mr. Mealy against these charges and fight to protect his constitutional right to free speech,\u201d the agency said.<\/p>\n

But Mealy\u2019s neighbors didn\u2019t see the Halloween decoration as a political statement. Instead, they found it distasteful.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I saw it, I went to him,\u201d said one man, who asked his name not be printed. \u201cI said, \u2018Listen, you\u2019re Black like me. Don\u2019t do that.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis brings up many bad memories \u2014 it\u2019s not good,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The mock lynching, the neighbor said, was actually hanging from the stairs of Mealy\u2019s home for three weeks before he moved it to the tree on the sidewalk.<\/p>\n

Another neighbor, Kenneth Jeter, 21, said he respects people voicing their opinions but thinks Mealy could have \u201ctoned it down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLike if you had just put the sign up, that\u2019s fine,\u201d Jeter said. \u201cBut having the sign in place with the noose and all, that\u2019s something different.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was not Mealy\u2019s first run-in with the law. In 2023, he was charged with weapons possession for a gun found in his home when police responded to an argument involving his girlfriend. He pleaded to misdemeanor weapons possession and was conditionally discharged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An artist\u2019s Halloween display showing a lynching in a tree outside his Brooklyn home was designed to symbolize…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,262,263,266,85,267,9,24,264,10,12,63,261,265],"class_list":["post-387945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-city","tag-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-new-york-news","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-crime","tag-sub-county-region"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387945","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=387945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}