George Floyd Statue Defaced, Again

Paint thrown on it in NYC
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Oct 4, 2021 2:01 AM CDT
George Floyd Statue Defaced, Again
In this Sept. 30, 2021, photo, a sculpture of George Floyd, one of three sculptures as part of the "SEEINJUSTICE" art exhibition, is unveiled as Floyd's brother Terrence, second from left, looks at Union Square in the Manhattan borough of New York.   (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

A statue honoring George Floyd in New York City’s Union Square Park was vandalized on Sunday, police said. According to police, a video showed an unidentified man on a skateboard throwing paint on the statue at approximately 10am then fleeing, the AP reports. 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. Police have not released the video. Cleanup efforts quickly got underway, NBC 4 New York reports. "It's just not hidden anymore," Floyd's brother tells News 12. "They're in your face now ... My culture, we not new to this."

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. 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.

(More George Floyd stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X