Lakewood Man Faces Jail for Carving Swastika in Lawn
A Lakewood, N.J. man was sentenced to 15 months in prison for carving a swastika into his neighbors’ lawn.
The sentence handed down Friday in Superior Court comes about one year after Scott Cooney was arrested and charged with bias intimidation. His neighbors in an adult housing development had watched as Cooney, 36, carved the swastika into their front lawn.
Cooney had pleaded guilty in June.
One of the neighbors is Jewish, according to the Asbury Park Press.
Prior to the swastika, Cooney had threatened the neighbors for several months with anti-Semitic and anti-gay slurs, according to prosecutors.
Though Cooney had been ordered to have no contact with his victims, he wrote threatening letters to them while in jail awaiting sentencing, which led to an increase in the time of his sentence.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO