Police investigate graffiti vandalism

A variety of graffiti, including a stick figure with the German word Heil drawn next to it, was found in Cedarhurst Park on Summit Avenue in Cedarhurst on Sunday morning, police said.

Chalk-drawn graffiti was found on three of the benches by the park’s monument and on the sides and top of the monument and on the street. The incident occurred sometime after 11 p.m. on Saturday and was reported to police by village officials at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, Det. Vincent Garcia said.

“There were some chalk drawings in the street and in the park, some sexual in nature and one figure striking the Heil salute,” said Det. Garcia, who noted the Fourth Squad is investigating the incident.

Village Trustee Ari Brown and his son Jake, a sophomore at the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway, met with the police and helped in the clean up of the

graffiti. The younger Brown was disturbed about the destruction to the park and his “anger and disgust of this outrageous act,” is because it bothers him when “someone messes with my town.”

“As the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, it angers me to see Nazi imagery such as the Heil that was drawn on the street,” he said. “It is used as a method to hurt, frighten and insult those that were lost, those that fought and those of us that are still here as a legacy to those despicable events.”

Noting that through the past years the park has received such improvements as restrooms, a gazebo, a playground and a water park, the younger Brown wanted his participation in the clean up to serve as an example. “I wanted my small act of cleaning up the graffiti to be a message to all of the other teens that they should not only think before they act, but to have some respect for those that have given so much to us,” he said.