A statue memorializing George Floyd in New York City’s Union Square Park has been vandalized. Police say video shows an unidentified person on a skateboard throwing paint on the statue at approximately 10 a.m. Sunday morning before fleeing.
A statue honoring George Floyd in New York City’s Union Square Park was vandalized over the weekend, police said.
A video released by the NYPD on Monday showed an unidentified man on a skateboard throwing paint on the statue around 10 a.m. Sunday then fleeing. Nearby statues of late Congressman John Lewis and Breonna Taylor, a Louisville, Kentucky, woman shot and killed by police last year, apparently weren’t touched.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared the vandalism an "act of cowardice" in a Monday tweet and said she had directed the state's Hate Crimes Task Force to provide any assistance in the investigation as cops work to find the suspect.
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Sunday's act wasn't the first example of vandalism to the statue memorializing Floyd, whose killing at the hands of police in Minneapolis last year galvanized a racial justice movement across the country.
The statue was unveiled on the Juneteenth holiday in a spot on Flatbush Avenue, in Brooklyn, and it was vandalized five days later with black paint and marked with an alleged logo of a white supremacist group.
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Members of the group that installed the statue cleaned it, and local residents and one of Floyd’s brothers gathered in July as it was prepared to move to Union Square, in the heart of Manhattan.
