By Thomas Tracy
A man facing 12 years in prison for smearing swastikas throughout the neighborhood actually helped police capture him as he tried to pin the crimes on his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend. Officials said that Pavel Andreenko, 22, a resident of East 18th Street near Avenue V, was charged with spray painting swastikas on eleven buildings between December 19 and December 23. After each incident, Andreenko would call 911 and report the incidents anonymously, claiming that a bald man was responsible for the bias attack – possibly in the hair-brained hopes that cops would narrow in on the man currently dating his ex, police alleged. Officials said that on Wednesday, December 19, Andreenko allegedly plastered swastikas on 2474 Ocean Avenue, 2086 East 19th Street and 2060 East 19th Street. The next day, he left swastikas and anti-Semitic statements on a wall across the street from 2235 East 17th Street, police alleged. He then went into a building at 2201 East 17th Street and left a swastika on the lobby wall, officials alleged. He completed his rounds Thursday by allegedly spray-painting a swastika on a wall at 1725 Gravesend Neck Road, police said. Andreenko was also charged with spray-painting two swastikas on the wall of a park house inside a park at the corner of Avenue V and East 14th Street on December 21 and then leaving a swastika on a blue Ford van that he had found in a parking lot at the corner of East 16th Street and Avenue U. His last act of bias vandalism was committed on Christmas Day, when he allegedly left a swastika on a wall at 2005 East 17th Street, officials said. If he had hoped that his 911 “tips” would lead police to his ex’s new boyfriend, he was wrong. Instead, cops were wondering why the same man was calling 911 after each one of these incidents took place. Cops began narrowing in on Andreenko when a cop from the 61st Precinct saw him placing one of the calls near where one of the swastikas was found and recognized him from an earlier crime. According to published reports, his fate was sealed when he was arrested on another, unrelated crime and found that his coat was smeared with white paint – the same paint used in the bias crimes, police alleged. Andreenko was arrested at his home on Thursday. By Sunday, he had been indicted on 11 counts of criminal mischief in the fourth degree as a hate crime and 11 counts of aggravated harassment in the first degree. If convicted, he could spend the next dozen years of his life in prison, Kings County District Attorney Charles Hynes explained. “Hate crimes are attacks against the whole of society, not just the individuals or groups targeted,” Hynes said as he announced Andreenko’s indictment, adding that his crime will be “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
