A Brooklyn Heights apartment building where a top Columbia University official lives was defaced with red paint by pro-Palestinian protesters Thursday morning, police said.
The activists also claimed they released live crickets inside the home of Columbia Chief Operating Officer Cas Holloway. A carpet in the vestibule was splashed with red paint and left crawling with mealworms.
Police were called to the building on Orange St. near Hicks St. about 7 a.m. The vandals are believed to have struck hours earlier, at 3:10 a.m., police said.
They painted red inverted triangles on the building, a controversial symbol of pro-Palestinian resistance that Hamas militants have used to mark military targets.
They also plastered the block with leaflets blaming Holloway for the arrests of pro-Palestinian students and protesters who took over parts of Columbia University’s campus last spring.
“Did you enjoy our present? Did it make you uncomfortable?” one leaflet read.
“Whatever you felt was incomparable to the pain you made Columbia students feel when you signed off on their brutalization because they stood against the genocide of Palestinians.”
Holloway, a former deputy mayor of operations under then-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, joined Columbia in February. Since then, he frequently signs off on emails to students and staff about the university’s response to pro-Palestinian protests, including most recently the implementation of a color-coded system for campus lockdowns.
“Columbia unequivocally condemns vandalism, threats, and personal attacks,” said Samantha Slater, a spokeswoman for the university. “Anyone engaging in such activity will be reported to law enforcement and face appropriate discipline. Every member of our community deserves to feel safe, valued, and able to thrive.”
Nobody answered when a Daily News reporter knocked on the targeted apartment’s door.
Dwellers of the apartment building on one of Brooklyn Heights’ historic “Fruit Streets” — a quiet, residential area including Orange, Pineapple and Cranberry Streets — condemned the protest.
Bob Wachewski, who’s lived in the building for 32 years and uses an electric wheelchair, was forced to use the laundry room entrance, which includes stairs he can’t access by himself, while the vandalized vestibule was cleaned up.
“There’s no reason to spill paint all over the entire lobby,” Wachewski said, as cops helped him out the front entrance and red paint got on his wheels. “You have a problem with him? Talk to him at his apartment — don’t spill it out in the lobby.”
Another neighbor, who declined to give her name, said the building is a small co-op and that the residents will have to pay for the damage.
By evening, news broke that three Columbia University deans who had dismissed concerns about antisemitism in the aftermath of pro-Palestinian protests this spring formally resigned. The administrators, who exchanged text messages at an alumni panel on Jewish campus life in late May, linked speakers to stereotypes about Jews and money, and mocked fears of antisemitism on campus.
Thursday’s early morning incident was not the first pro-Palestinian vandalism to target Columbia. On Juneteenth, protesters vandalized the 116th Street subway station of the 1 train with inverted red triangles and profanities, calling on the university to divest from Israel and get out of Harlem, photos posted on Instagram by the student group Columbia University Apartheid Divest show.
Before that, activists visited the homes of four Columbia and its affiliate Barnard College trustees in May, with flyers accusing Columbia administrators of endangering students by calling the cops, student newspaper Columbia Spectator reported.
Cops are still investigating a series of June 12 red paint incidents sparked by tensions over the war between Hamas and Israel, with vandals in those incidents targeting some officials from the Brooklyn Museum. The vandalism was spurred by opposition to the museum’s investment in companies with ties to the Israeli military.
Videographer Samuel Seligson was charged Tuesday with criminal mischief as a hate crime for being at the protest where six dissenters splashed red paint outside a Hicks St. building in Brooklyn Heights where Brooklyn Museum Executive Director Anne Pasternak lives, police said.
Seligson’s lawyer, Leena Widdi, railed at the criminal charges, calling them an “appalling” overreach since Seligson didn’t take part in the destruction.
On Aug. 1, cops arrested Taylor Pelton, 28, after identifying her as one of the vandals. She too was charged with criminal mischief as a hate crime.
Vandals also painted inverted red triangles on the doors of Pasternak’s building.
The same day, a home on Douglass St. in Boerum Hill — where a museum board member lives — was also splashed with paint.
Police later released surveillance footage of the suspects and classified the incidents as hate crimes.
Video of the unfolding damage was posted to the Instagram account for A15 Actions, an international group of activists whose goal is to disrupt economies they view as participating in the bloodshed in Gaza.
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