The New York Police Department, in a stunning misuse of public funds and resources, has sent in a helicopter, ‘dozens’ of officers and blocked off streets, all so they could corner and apprehend a single graffiti artist who was painting a Super Mario Bros. question block on the front of a water tower.
As the New York Daily News reports, police first arrived on the scene at 1am and originally couldn’t find the suspect, until “an NYPD helicopter shone flood lights on the structure and saw him popping his head through a hatch at the top of the 10-story tower”.
You can see an image of the unfinished piece on the tower here.
After the artist refused commands to climb down, the NYPD claims they “became concerned for his safety and utilized a drone in an attempt to make contact with him”. They also blocked off the streets around the tower, and ended up deploying a hugely disproportionate number of officers to attend the scene.
The artist, likely panicked into hiding inside the tower because the NYPD sent a helicopter in after him, eventually decided to climb down at 1:30pm this afternoon, 12 hours after he was first discovered. Once down he was immediately arrested.
WNYC’s Christopher Werth was there reporting from the scene, and first took these images:
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Before attending the resulting press conference, where his entirely legitimate question about the overwhelming nature of the police response was shot down:
If you’d like more information on attempts to defund American police forces, you can find that here.