UWS Vandal Made Giant Swastika Out Of MTA Posters, Cops Say

UPPER WEST SIDE, MANHATTAN — A New Year's Eve vandal used MTA advisory posters to make a giant swastika display on an Uptown subway station elevator, police said this week.

The man, dressed in all black and a dark hat, used MTA service advisory flyers to stick the swastika to the 96th Street station elevator door around 6:20 a.m. on Dec. 31, police said.

The man took flyers that appear to be taped together to create the giant swastika pattern piece by piece and stick it to the elevator, according to police and video.

(NYPD).

The vandalism came around the same time that city officials were dealing with a spike in anti-Semitic incidents that appeared to start during the Jewish holidays and continued into the New Year.

Those incidents, which mainly happened in Brooklyn, led to increased police in certain neighborhoods with large Jewish populations and the promise for a new public school curriculum about combatting hate crimes.

Rallies against the hate crimes have since been held in Queens, Bay Ridge and a citywide march in Manhattan.

Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM, or on Twitter @NYPDTips. All calls are strictly confidential.