GREENWICH VILLAGE — Four men were arrested early Wednesday after spay painting an anti-Trump and and anti-NYPD message on a building at the corner of MacDougal and West Houston streets, police said.
According to a police source, Max Dornfeld, 36, who has several prior arrests for graffiti, spray painted "Film yourself asking NYPD questions about Trump & Jeff Sessions #NYPDCHALLENGE” — while three others acted as lookouts. Jeff Sessions, a controversial Alabama senator, is President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for attorney general.
A hashtag challenge is meant to spur people to post their videos to Twitter.
The four hopped into a Mercedes SUV and tried to flee after police spotted the crew by the wall at about 1:30 a.m., a police source said. The police were quickly able to arrest the men after a car-stop on Sixth Avenue.
Dornfeld, who lives in Oakland, California, is known as a "prolific" tagger on the West Coast. According to a 2007 Seattle Times article, Dornfeld had been expelled from high school at 15 because of his graffiti, and, up until 2007, had been arrested 48 times, charged 74 times and convicted at least 29 times.
Dornfeld is being held on $1,000 bail, court records show, on misdemeanor charges of making graffiti and possession of a graffiti instrument. Three other men were also hit with graffiti charges, but released on their own recognizance. They are all due back in Manhattan criminal court Nov. 28.
