Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, Assemblyman Joe Lentol (D-Greenpoint, Williamsburg) along with Jews, Muslims and Sikhs put their mouths and checkbooks together last week to decry religious vandalism and hate crimes, after several statues at a Williamsburg Catholic Church were vandalized.
Our Lady of Consolation Roman Catholic Church on Metropolitan Avenue near Berry St. in Williamsburg was vandalized a week ago Sunday when an apparently drunken perpetrator urinated on and broke a pair of angel statues, police said.
This prompted Adams, Lentol and leaders from the Jewish, Muslim and Sikh communities to come together and gave the church $2,000 to fix the damage.
“The church has come under attack in this manner six times in the past eight years,” Adams told reporters. “If someone paints a swastika or if someone says something that is anti-Muslim, those of us who of other faiths should come to their aid. We should not stand silently by.”
“The destruction of the statues at Our Lady of Consolation in #Williamsburg is part of a wider pattern of hate and violence that we must root out. It must be investigated as a hate crime and I’m proud to stand with interfaith leaders to come together and rebuild,” he added on Twitter.
Providing half the funding was The Bridge Project Founder and President Mark Meyer Appel, whose organization is dedicated to multicultural advocacy.
“Thanks the leadership and efforts of Borough President Eric Adams, we have collected and donated $1,000 towards the restoration of the broken statues which was vandalized this past Monday morning,” said Appel.
The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating, but has yet to make an arrest. Police did release a video of the culprit, a white man who is about 30 years old, 6 feet tall and 190 pounds with a light complexion and straight, short brown hair.
