A swastika was found etched on playground equipment at Ocean Avenue Elementary School in Northport, Suffolk Police said.
A parent in the school district discovered the anti-Semitic graffiti on a playground slide on Monday evening, the authorities said. The guards removed the swastika Tuesday morning, just hours before the school’s annual “Welcome Back Fair,” district officials said.
“We have alerted the Northport Village Police, which are investigating the incident, and contacted the Suffolk County Police Department’s Hate Crimes Unit,” wrote Robert Banzer, superintendent of the Northport-East School District, in a letter to the community on Tuesday. “We will cooperate fully with the police in their investigation, including the provision of video surveillance material.”
The school district has filed a police report on the vandalism, which appears to be an isolated incident, authorities said.
But the founders of Not In Our Town Northport, an anti-hate group formed last summer, said swastikas and other graphic images were sprayed on Dickinson Avenue Elementary School in East Northport last year.
“There is clearly hatred and bigotry in our community,” the group leaders wrote in a letter to the district officials. “We have to ask ourselves, what has this district done in the year since the Dickinson incident other than just painting over the symbols and words of hate? What measures has this district taken to clearly show that this will not be tolerated? “
Banzer said in the letter that the district has “zero tolerance” for discrimination.
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“I want to make it clear that this symbol of anti-Semitism or any other intolerant symbol or slander has no place in our school community or society,” he wrote. “Those responsible for this hateful act will be prosecuted and disciplined according to the district’s code of conduct.”
Anyone with information about the vandalism is asked to call Suffolk Police at 631-261-7500.
Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has been with Newsday since 2011. He is alum from Queens College and American University.
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