Swastikas And Homophobic Graffiti Scrawled In Queens Park

Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
The New York Police Department is looking for vandals who scrawled swastikas and anti-gay graffiti on rocks and trees in Queens’ Forest Park after the graffiti was discovered on Sunday.
“The graffiti was discovered by Parks staff on Sunday evening, and was promptly painted over,” a spokeswoman for the New York City Parks Department told DNAInfo. The site of the graffiti was located at 112th Street and Park Lane South, and the incident is apparently being investigated as a hate crime.
Since the November election, New York City has a marked spike in bias incidents, with the police noting an increase of a third in hate crimes directed against Jews and Muslims. Graffiti targeting Jews has appeared in parks, buildings, subway stations and phone booths across New York. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has formed a new state task force on hate crimes to fight the wave of bias incidents.
Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news. All donations are still being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000 until April 24.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.

