A Port Washington native said campaign signs and flags he put up at his home in support of President Donald Trump have been vandalized or stolen five times.
The police said they have made no arrests.
In November, Uri Bloch purchased a yard sign advertising Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign and installed it prominently on his front lawn. The next day, he found it off to the side of the lawn and returned it to its spot, figuring “it was the wind.”
“A day later, after I put up the sign again, I found it thrown in the shrubbery next to my house,” Bloch said.
Bloch put the sign back in its place. Within two days, it was stolen from his front lawn. “Someone had been tampering with it, and then they came onto my property and stole it,” he said.
The three incidents in November made Bloch decide to add something more permanent.
“I decided to get an actual flag and nail it to my porch so it would be more difficult for someone to do something,” Bloch said.
Bloch then bought a flag from the Trump campaign and hung it on his porch’s overhang, as well as several more yard signs. The homeowner also installed two cameras on his porch in hope of identifying the vandals.
For a few days, he says, nothing happened – until the middle of December.
“After several days, someone decided to come during the evening, yanked [the flag] down and tore it up and then left it on my porch,” Bloch said. “I ended up catching it on tape.”
Undeterred, Bloch ordered another flag, and decided to put it up around noon on New Year’s Day.
“I decided to give them one more chance, so I bought another flag, put up on New Year’s, and I put it up higher on the porch overhang,” Bloch said. “I also bought another two cameras for the porch.”
With four cameras on the porch, Bloch figured, none of the vandals would want to risk getting caught.
“Just from seeing all the cameras it won’t make sense why anyone would come,” he said.
Less than 12 hours later, “around 9 to 10 p.m.,” Bloch said, “there was a commotion at my door which actually set off the alarm at my house.”
“There were two individuals who jumped and tore down the sign, and a third waiting on the lawn with them,” Bloch said. “And when the alarm rang, they ran off and dropped the flag. I guess the scare of the alarm got them nervous, and then Nassau County police came and reviewed the footage.”
Since Jan. 1, Bloch has put his flag higher and added two more Trump yard signs to his lawn.
“No one has come, because I have cameras and I’ll send it to the police,” Bloch said. “A lot of people have different yard signs in town and have different political things they stand for, but no one’s ever dealt with what I’ve dealt with.”
Bloch said he has also received criticism online and in person for his signs.
“Ever since I put up the first sign, I got hate mail online and letters,” Bloch said. “At least those people weren’t coming to my house.”
The collection of signs on Bloch’s lawn now includes one reading “Stand with Israel” after an incident that Bloch says occurred as he was putting up the flag the first time.
“When I put up the flag, someone then came up to me at my house, and they started yelling at me that I was a Nazi,” Bloch said. “I responded that I was Jewish, and that’s when I decided to put up the Israel yard sign.”
A representative from the Nassau County Police Department’s office of public information said that officers went to Bloch’s home on Dec. 16, and no suspects had been brought in. The representative could not say whether there had been similar incidents in the Port area.
Bloch, who grew up in Port Washington and saw his children go through school in the area, said that while he blames the individuals responsible for the vandalism, he also has criticism for those who “create an environment to perpetuate the hatred.”
“The one thing is that people have to ask themselves, where are the people learning this behavior of hatred? Where is it coming? Is it several solo actors or an environment perpetuating this hatred?” Bloch said. “They’ve not only made it an environment where some of these thugs thinks it’s OK, but rile these people up and create an environment where people come onto my my property and trespass, destroy and steal. it’s not just a couple of thugs, it’s a communitywide issue.”
