Mineola Parks and Businesses Victims of Graffiti Spree

A spike in graffiti has been noticed throughout the Village of Mineola over the course of the last week, with black tag marks and profane language appearing on several village buildings, restaurants and other locations.

According to Building Department Supervisor Dan Whalen as many as 10 locations were spotted with graffiti around the village, including parks and businesses.

“We got hit very hard this past weekend,” Superintendent of Public Works Tom Rini said in his report to the Wednesday night at . “There are locations that just popped up and happened to be on the first warm weekend and somebody with a spraycan probably went at it.” 

Locations of the graffiti include the municipal garage on First Street across from the , the building behind the roller rink at , locations at , the shed adjacent to the bathrooms at the , the fence along the and nearby businesses, under the Roslyn Road trestle and La Cisterna restaurant, among others.

The Department of Public Works has already cleaned up some of the graffiti including repainting the pool fence and washing the building near the roller hockey rink but shadows remain and are likely permanent.

“You can’t get it all out of cement, unfortunately it absorbs right in,” Rini said.

Whalen said that the Department of Public Works has spoken to individual businesses to erase the graffiti as much as possible.

Rini said that it was his understanding that Winthrop Hospital was responsible for maintaining the municipal parking garage, saying that “I think we’re working on trying to get them to take care of that now.”

police were notified of the vandalism and took reports of the incidents. Whalen added that he authorized the police to enforce an arrest on any person who has been charged with placing graffiti on any location in the village.

“We do want them arrested and prosecuted,” he said.

“We will prosecute anybody that’s caught marking up this village,” said. “It’s disgusting and revolting.”

Trustee George Durham took a page from the MTA handbook asking residents to remain vigilant and alert police if they see any such activity.

“We’re asking residents ‘if you see something, say something’,”  he said.