Police say the swastikas drawn on a bus shelter on Ocean Avenue between Voorhies Avenue and Shore Parkway North were an isolated incident, and not the work of a serial, bigoted tagger.
The Nazi symbols, first reported on the Sheepshead Bites blog on Oct. 7, were written on the Plexiglas that cover the shelter’s advertisements.
“We absolutely do not get chronic calls about swastikas or similar types of graffiti in the neighborhood,” said one 61st Precinct Officer, who declined to be named because of the city’s restrictions on officers making comments to the press.
Some members of Sheepshead Bay’s large Jewish population — there are two synagogues and four yeshivas within 10 square blocks of where the vandalism occurred — are not concerned that offensive graffiti will become a frequent occurrence.
“Swastikas are pretty unusual around here,” said Pauline Bilus, director of the borough’s Holocaust Memorial Committee. “We’ve found that some people who draw them don’t even really understand what they symbolize.”
The last high profile swastika incident in Sheepshead Bay was two years ago when a 22-year-old local resident spray painted swastikas and tried to frame his ex-girlfriend’s new flame.
