The vandalism came just days after the statue was unveiled, and only a day before the officer who killed Mr. Floyd was to be sentenced.
A statue of George Floyd that was installed in Brooklyn less than a week ago was spray-painted and marked with a white supremacist group’s logo in an act of vandalism that the police were investigating as a hate crime, officials said on Thursday. The defacing of the statue, which was unveiled on Flatbush Avenue last Saturday to commemorate the Juneteenth holiday, was discovered by officers early Thursday, the police said. It was covered with black spray paint and marked with a stencil for Patriot Front, a white supremacist group with a small but growing presence in New York City. “It’s at the epitome of not only anti-Blackness and racism, but it is also about the lack of even basic human decency about the life of George Floyd,” said Imani Henry, a lead organizer with Equality for Flatbush, a local community group that opposes gentrification in the area and fights against police brutality. “For someone to desecrate an innocent person’s tribute is just beyond the pale,” Mr. Henry said. The overnight act of vandalism came about a day before the former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was convicted in April of murdering Mr.
