Surveillance video shows the five people who climbed on top of the Brooklyn Bridge and replaced the U.S. flags with white bleached-out versions. Police are currently looking for the people.
Brooklyn Bridge video
The video shows the five people walking on the Brooklyn Bridge after 3 a.m. on Tuesday. According to ABC News, the lights that illuminate the flags on both sides of the bridge flickered and then went out around 3:30. Two hours later, construction workers who were at the bridge noticed the change in the flags and alerted police.
Officials then climbed the main cables of the Brooklyn Bridge and saw that the lights had been covered by aluminum pans that were held in place with zip ties. They pulled down the white flags and returned the U.S. Stars and Stripes to their usual place.
Who put up the white flags and why?
Police still don’t know who did it, and they’re apparently not happy about it. Officials said it’s a good thing the group did not place bombs instead of flags. They took the white flags to a laboratory to run tests on them. Officials say there don’t appear any sign that the act was related to politics or terrorism. They say it could be an art project or some kind of statement but that it’s unclear exactly what kind of statement the group is trying to make.
Officials note that whoever pulled off the caper was obviously very experienced at climbing, scaling 276 feet and getting past the two locked gates that are at the top of the steel cables on the bridge. They said the perpetrators could have experience climbing in bridgework or construction or possibly have been up to the flag platforms on the Brooklyn Bridge before.
Eric Adams, who is president of the Brooklyn borough, has offered a $5,000 reward for anyone who has information that leads to an arrest. He said the people who carried out the crime are guilty of desecrating the flag.
Speculation about the white flags runs rampant
On Tuesday when the white flags where discovered on the Brooklyn Bridge, there were all kinds of stories doing the rounds of social media. One group called Bike Lobby posted a tongue-in-cheek claim that they did it, and the media ran with it. Later the group’s members posted comments poking fun that the media had taken them seriously.
