George Floyd’s statue in New York City vandalised, again

A statue honoring George Floyd in New York City’s Union Square Park was defaced on Sunday, police said. As per authorities, a video shows an unidentified man on a skateboard throwing paint on the statue and then fleeing the spot. The incident happened around 10.00 am.

As per reports, statues of Congressman John Lewis and Breonna Taylor, a Louisville, Kentucky, woman shot and killed by police last year, were not touched. The police are yet to release the video of the unidentified man.

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.

The statue of Floyd is one of three by the artist Chris Carnabuci.

“Vandalism of any sort is not an action that is productive or meaningful,” Carnabuci said in a written statement.

“Actions like this remind us that we have a long way to go,” the artist added.

According to ConfrontArt, a social justice arts organisation that produced the exhibition said that the incident had a silver lining.

By the time ConfrontArt members arrived to restore the statue, other members had started “scrubbing and working” to honour the statue.

“[They] bought supplies out of their own pockets,” the organisation’s co-founder Andrew Cohen told CNN.

“This is inspiring teamwork and support from the community,” he added.

The New York Police hate-crime task force has opened a probe into the incident.

(With inputs from Associated Press)