Two teens arrested after swastikas painted on playground in Jewish area of Brooklyn

[question everything]

Two teenagers were arrested Thursday after dozens of swastikas were painted on a playground in a predominantly Jewish area of Brooklyn, New York, this week, the New York Police Department said.

The 15-year-olds both face aggravated harassment charges, with one of the teens also facing a charge of criminal mischief as a hate crime, the NYPD said.

(snip)

Officers responded on Monday to a call at Gravesend Park in the southwest Brooklyn neighborhood of Borough Park, where they found about 16 swastikas painted in red on slides, walls and the ground.

Then on Wednesday, police responded to another call and found about 57 swastikas drawn at the same playground in red, blue and yellow. “Adolf Hitler” was also scrawled in paint.

(snip)

“I am sickened by this antisemitic vandalism in Borough Park,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a statement. “Antisemitism has no place in our city, and I stand shoulder to shoulder with the Jewish New Yorkers who were targeted.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/22/us/new-york-swastikas-playground-investigation

[JudyM]

1. Glad they got em.

Hopefully some serious community service and targeted education will result.

[mucifer]

2. I was about 10 years old when a friend and I found a swastika on our playground

My grammar school was probably more than half Jewish. My friend and I made a design over it. Our gym teacher came by and asked what we were doing thinking we were making graffiti . When we explained she nodded her head and walked away. Nothing more to it than that.

[OldBaldy1701E]

3. I attended a small, southern, private Christian school for a few years.

At one point, there were a few boys who were drawing swastikas in their school history books and then passing it off as 'research' or 'expression of historical interest'. The fact that teachers would tell these kids to 'erase that' and then just walk away before the task was even carried out was appalling.

Not surprising, given that the entire reason for the existence of the school was the fact that the white farmers did not want to have their kids going to school with 'those kids'. (Apparently, my parents feel the same way, since I and my brother were sent there as well.) To use an old saying, 'The fruit don't fall far from the tree.' (There are always exceptions, or course. Case in point right here.)

It will be interesting to find out just how this idea got planted in these two. Was it familial? Was it social media? Peer pressure?

Orders from on high?