A 26-year-old Brooklyn man is facing charges after Nassau police say he drew a swastika on the door of the Marion & Aaron JCC in Lawrence. Saul Amantecatl Sanchez was taken into custody Tuesday and charged with aggravated harassment and making graffiti, then released on an appearance ticket.
According to News12 Long Island, Nassau police said officers responded to the JCC at 140 Central Ave. after the swastika was discovered, and that the incident itself happened on Nov. 6. Police say the arrest followed days later, on Tuesday, Nov. 10. A separate report from Daily Voice likewise identifies Sanchez as the Brooklyn man taken into custody in the case.
What the Charges Could Mean
Under New York law, making graffiti without the property owner's permission is a class A misdemeanor, according to the New York State Senate's penal code listing. The aggravated harassment charge adds a second layer to the case, though the statute itself was not detailed in the available filings. Sanchez was released on an appearance ticket and is expected back in court at a later date.
No police statement, criminal complaint, or court record laying out further details of the case — including any motive — has surfaced beyond what police have shared. The JCC had not commented on the incident. It remains unclear what led to the alleged graffiti.
Part of a Broader, Mixed Pattern on Long Island
This is not the first time a Jewish institution in Lawrence has faced a security scare. The Marion & Aaron Gural JCC received an emailed bomb threat back in May 2022 that prompted a Nassau police investigation and a bomb-squad search, according to the LI Herald. More recently, a swastika was found etched into a window at the Inwood train station portion located in Lawrence, the same News12 outlet reported.
Swastika graffiti has turned up at other Long Island institutions in the past, too. In April, police arrested a 15-year-old Syosset High School student and his father after swastika graffiti was found in a boys' bathroom there, as reported by The Times of Israel, which also noted the school had been hit by a spate of similar antisemitic graffiti back in 2017. Years earlier, in 2016, a man was arrested for swastika graffiti at a Long Island college, according to the Associated Press.
What the Numbers Show
Statewide data paints a complicated picture. The New York/New Jersey ADL recorded 1,160 antisemitic incidents across New York in 2025, a 19 percent decline from the year before. Yet within that overall drop, incidents involving a swastika specifically rose 10 percent to 294, and Suffolk County saw its own incident count climb 10 percent, from 62 to 68.
Incidents at Jewish institutions statewide fell 11 percent to 227 in 2025, per the same ADL report. That follows a 2024 that the ADL and News12 described as a record high nationally, up 5 percent from 2023, with New York logging more than 1,400 incidents that year — two-thirds of them in New York City alone, as the station reported in its earlier coverage.
For now, the Lawrence case remains in its early stages, with Sanchez due back in court under the terms of his appearance ticket. No further details on the case's court status or outcome have been made public.
