Cuomo urges de Blasio to remove graffiti from NYC buildings
Gov. Andrew Cuomo told Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday to remove graffiti blaring anti-police messages like “Kill all cops” and “F–k cops” from municipal buildings, calling it “another sign of decay” in the Big Apple.
“I’m telling the mayor: The cleaning up the city is important. You have a lot of negativity in the air now. Positive progress, move forward!” Cuomo urged Hizzoner during a Manhattan press briefing Thursday.
“It’s gotta be cleaned, it’s graffiti! Graffiti is not COVID, it’s not. It’s spray paint on a building,” Cuomo said, noting the relative ease of addressing the issue, which de Blasio had neglected for weeks.
City workers on Wednesday began cleaning some of the graffiti that sprang up when demonstrators began occupying a park near City Hall last month after police dismantled the Occupy City Hall encampment in a pre-dawn raid.
But a de Blasio administration official told The Post that a special contractor will need a “few weeks” to remove all the markings because of “the unique nature of the damage” to the landmarked buildings. Superstructures Engineers + Architects will perform the job at a cost of $150,000 to city taxpayers.
“Get the graffiti off the building, detergent, power washer, brush,” Cuomo said.
“It’s another sign of decay and what we’re trying to do is say to people, ‘New York is on the way back.’
“People need to see that progress. They certainly don’t need to see deterioration, and graffiti is something we can handle,” the governor said.
“You enforce the law. It’s illegal to do graffiti,” Cuomo added.
Police have not made any arrests for the numerous ugly scrawlings on three landmark properties near City Hall — the Tweed Courthouse and Surrogate’s Court on Chambers Street and the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building on Centre Street.
Meanwhile, last week police quickly busted four people for throwing blue paint on the yellow letters of the “Black Lives Matter” mural on Fifth Avenue outside Trump Tower.
A City Hall spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
