KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS
24/7 NYPD guard for Chris statue
After Mayo r de Blasio ordered a review of “offensive” monuments and several were vandalized, the NYPD is guarding this iconic statue ahead of Columbus Day.
He’s Italian, very tall, a little stiff — and he’s getting roundthe-clock police protection. No, it’s not Bill de Blasio. In the city that’s the biggest terror target in the world, the NYPD is providing 24/7 bodyguard services to the marble statue of Christopher Columbus in Columbus Circle.
The patrols, which consist of one or two cops working eighthour shifts, were set up in hopes of preventing any more vandalism before Monday’s Columbus Day holiday.
“The statue has been there for years and years [since 1892] without any issues,” groused one law-enforcement source.
“Now because everybody’s complaining about Columbus, and they attacked him with paint, we have to put cops on there to make sure nobody does it anymore,” said the source, calling the new patrol a necessary, but irritating, “waste of manpower.”
On Wednesday afternoon, the Columbus Circle monument was ringed in metal barricades. A patrol car with two uniformed cops was parked within the circle.
“I think it’s a bit much,” mused one woman as she passed by.
Controversy has swirled around the city’s five Columbus statues in recent weeks, an offshoot of the nationwide backlash against monuments honoring Confederate generals and other controversial figures.
Italian-American leaders have been at war with Mayor de Blasio over his recent decision to appoint a commission to review the fate of the city’s potentially offensive monuments.
Hizzoner has refused to guarantee that the Columbus statues will be untouched.
Meanwhile, at least three local Columbus statues have been splashed with paint or defaced with graffiti in recent weeks.
The Columbus in the circle had some paisans in high places pulling strings to secure the celebrity-worthy protection.
Angelo Vivolo, president of the Columbus Citizens Foundation, told The Post he called Commissioner Joseph Esposito at the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management, who called his old pals at the NYPD, where he was Chief of Department until 2013.
“I spoke to Joe Esposito. He took care of it,” Vivolo said.
The Columbus Circle monument had already been under police protection for nearly a week on Sept. 23 when a homeless vandal, Daniel Kimery, 38, admittedly used pink nail polish to deface the left hand of a bronze relief of Columbus on the statue’s pedestal.
Nabbed in the act, Kimery “explained” that the pink signified the blood on Columbus’s hands, then pleaded guilty and got off with $170 in fees and surcharges, court records show.
Nearby on Sept. 12, vandals splashed red paint on the hands of the Columbus statue in Central Park; in late August the Columbus statue in Astoria was stenciled with blue paint reading, “Don’t Honor Genocide.”