Anti-Gay Graffiti Found In Rockland County Park
ORANGETOWN, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) -- More hateful graffiti has been discovered in Rockland County – this time targeting the LGBTQ community during pride month.
As CBS2's Brian Conybeare reported, the recent rash of incidents may lead to the creation of a new countywide hate crimes task force.
Deep in the woods of Blauvelt State Park in Orangetown lie old concrete blocks – many of them adorned with colorful graffiti created by local artists.
Two of the blocks already had the rainbow colors of the gay pride flag, but someone covered them with hate-filled anti-gay slurs.
"It's sickening," Said Brooke Malloy, executive director of the Rockland County Pride Center. "t's really disheartening."
Malloy hiked 20 minutes up to the park and took pictures of the graffiti. She said even though progress has been made, anti-gay bias is still all too prevalent.
"It's in the woods, but it's actually right here out in the streets," she said. "It's just safer to do it somewhere, I guess, were nobody's going to catch you"
The incident in the park comes amid a flurry of swastikas and anti-Semitic messages – including graffiti found just days ago in Nanuet.
Someone painted a swastika on a for-sale sign in front of a home on Second Avenue in Nanuet, along with the word "hate" on the sidewalk.
The Anti-Defamation League said anti-Semitic incidents jumped 50 percent across the state of New York last year.
"When you attack at one group -- whether it be ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion -- you attack all of us," said Rockland County Executive Ed Day.
Orangetown's supervisor also emphatically stated that bias and bigotry will not be tolerated.
"We feel like the park is a special place and really resent and object to any kind of vandalism there, and especially for people to do bias and hate-related graffiti which really attacks members of our community," Orangetown Supervisor Andy Stewart told WCBS 880.
Day said Rockland County is preparing to launch a new law enforcement task force to track and hopefully prevent such hate crimes. But Malloy said much more needs to be done.
"If we didn't have a long way to go, we wouldn't need a pride center," Malloy said.
Since last fall, anti-Semitic graffiti has been found in Haverstraw, Pomona, New City and New Square.