Gothamist
A non-profit newsroom, powered by WNYC.
Gothamist
Listen Live
News
160 Pride flags vandalized at historic Stonewall National Monument, NYPD says
By
Mike Hayes
Published Jun 15, 2024
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
Never miss a story
Email address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .
Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
By
Mike Hayes
Published Jun 15, 2024
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
We rely on your support to make local news available to all
Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2026. Donate today
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
A large number of Pride flags were destroyed after they were taken from an LGBTQ+ monument in Downtown Manhattan this week, police said.
On Friday morning, the NYPD said it received a report that flags were removed from the Stonewall National Monument on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. Police said that a preliminary investigation found that a person removed and destroyed multiple flags on Thursday night and then fled the scene.
The NYPD confirmed to Gothamist on Saturday that about 160 flags were stolen and damaged. Police said they have neither identified a suspect nor made any arrests in connection with the incident. They also said that no injuries have been reported.
The incident marks the second consecutive year that the monument’s flags were damaged during Pride Month.
City Councilmember Eric Bottcher, who is gay and represents the district where the vandalism occurred, said he received a text message on Friday morning from a volunteer at the memorial, which features a Pride flag installation that goes up around the park’s perimeter every June.
“He told me that sometime overnight, someone came by and vandalized the flag display,” Bottcher said. “They broke the flag sticks around the perimeter of the park. They stole about three-quarters of the flags around the park.”
“And they even jumped the fence and went into the memorial and stole the flags that said peace and love inside the park,” he added.
Bottcher said that shortly after that call, Chelsea residents told him that Pride flags in their neighborhood had been “burned.”
Bottcher said that the Stonewall vandalism incident had been captured on video, but the perpetrator’s face wasn’t visible. He said that police informed him they are still canvassing businesses in the area in hopes of finding footage of the vandal or vandals.
“One of the things that I'm working on now is ensuring that we have better camera coverage all around, because it's not a matter of if this happens again, it's when it happens again we want to make sure that we can quickly identify who has done this,” Bottcher said.
The councilmember said both the National Park Service and the NYPD’s 6th Precinct assured him they are taking the incident “very seriously.”
“We're going to make sure that they are apprehended and that they're held accountable,” Bottcher said.
The next morning, Bottcher posted photos of some of the vandalized flags, which had left on the ground after their sticks were snapped, on the social media platform X and Instagram.
Mayor Eric Adams also reacted to the vandalism on X, saying: “Hate has no place in our city, and nothing will change that.”
“We love the LGBTQ+ community and celebrate them during Pride and all year round. We'll always have your back, and we will bring whoever defaced the Stonewall monument to justice,” he added.
The monument honors a weeklong uprising by New York City’s gay community that began when police raided the Stonewall Inn, a well-known gay bar on Christopher Street, on June 28, 1969.
The raid sparked a riot and six days of protests – and is considered a watershed moment in the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement.
“I want the people who have done this should know that if their objective was to strike fear into our community, if their objective was to intimidate our community, they have failed and they failed badly because incidents like this only strengthen our resolve to fight back, to fight for our rights, to celebrate Pride month, and that's exactly what we're going to do,” Bottcher said.
The site for the monument was established in 2016 by presidential proclamation, according to the Stonewall National Monument’s website. It includes the Stonewall Inn, which is located across the street.
It is the first national park dedicated to LGBTQ+ history.
Tagged
public safety
manhattan
Mike Hayes
Mike Hayes covers equity and access to opportunity in New Jersey. He joined WNYC and Gothamist in 2023. Before that, he worked as a freelance journalist writing about policing and criminal justice. He has written for ProPublica, CNN, HuffPost, BuzzFeed News and The Appeal. He is also the author of the book, “The Secret Files: Bill De Blasio, The NYPD, and the Broken Promises of Police Reform.” In 2019, he was a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists.
Read more
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
MORE news
Tompkins Square Park is getting a makeover. Some say it's too much.
Some regulars at the East Village park want to preserve its not-so-fancy offerings.
By
Willow Higgins
Published Oct 17, 2026 at 7:00 a.m. ET
Deer are all over New Jersey roads looking for sex, state officials warn
Mid-October through mid-December is deer mating season, which can be a danger to drivers as the sex-seeking creatures cross roadways throughout the Garden State.
By
Rosemary Misdary
News
Deer are all over New Jersey roads looking for sex, state officials warn
Mid-October through mid-December is deer mating season, which can be a danger to drivers as the sex-seeking creatures cross roadways throughout the Garden State.
By
Rosemary Misdary
Man messaged 'I got straight poison' before giving NYC college students fentanyl, feds say
By
Samantha Max
Inside the plan to fix the nearly collapsed Pfizer Building, 1/64th of an inch at a time
By
David Brand
School bus carrying autistic students got lost in Brooklyn for 4 hours last year
By
Jessica Gould
Never miss a story
Catch up on the most important headlines with a roundup of essential NYC stories, delivered to your inbox daily.
Sign upEmail address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .