A Halloween display of a lynching in Brooklyn sparks an arrest, but was it harassment or art?

Roni Jacobson and Rocco Parascandola, New York Daily News on Oct 30, 2026

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NEW YORK — An artist’s Halloween display showing a lynching in a tree outside his Brooklyn home was designed to symbolize how minorities are being abused in the U.S. — but the work outraged neighbors, and investigating cops charged Aaron Mealy with aggravated harassment, the Daily News has learned.

Mealy, a Black artist, explained his depiction of a hanging was meant to evoke anger about how Blacks were still treated in the U.S. The display, which included a noose, was found hanging from a tree on the sidewalk outside his home on Herkimer St. near Buffalo Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

“Hey, still lynching n—-s in 2026,” the 35-year-old Mealy wrote on a paper sign posted on the tree the body was hanging from, according to police. “Happy Halloween.”

“This is art,” he added.

His neighbors disagreed and called police, who arrested Mealy for aggravated harassment on Sunday.

Mealy violated city law, which says a noose, “commonly exhibited as a symbol of racism and intimidation,” cannot be placed on property without the owner’s consent. The city owned the tree Mealy’s display was hanging from.

When cops arrived, Mealy told officers that he “would like people to know that people are still being lynched and that [he] does not care how people really feel because…art is meant to evoke feelings,” according to the criminal complaint.

Mealy was released without bail. He referred all calls to his Legal Aid attorney.

“Mr. Mealy is a Black man who made a political statement on Halloween to call attention to the racism and violence Black people continue to face in this country, from police brutality and discriminatory policing to mass incarceration,” Legal Aid said in a statement. “Rather than criminalizing his expression, we should be confronting the systemic racism and violence that prompted it. This was an act of political expression, not a hate crime.”

“The Legal Aid Society will vigorously defend Mr. Mealy against these charges and fight to protect his constitutional right to free speech,” the agency said.

But Mealy’s neighbors didn’t see the Halloween decoration as a political statement. Instead, they found it distasteful.

“When I saw it, I went to him,” said one man, who asked his name not be printed. “I said, ‘Listen, you’re Black like me. Don’t do that.'”

“This brings up many bad memories — it’s not good,” he said.

The mock lynching, the neighbor said, was actually hanging from the stairs of Mealy’s home for three weeks before he moved it to the tree on the sidewalk.

Another neighbor, Kenneth Jeter, 21, said he respects people voicing their opinions but thinks Mealy could have “toned it down.”

“Like if you had just put the sign up, that’s fine,” Jeter said. “But having the sign in place with the noose and all, that’s something different.”

This was not Mealy’s first run-in with the law. In 2023, he was charged with weapons possession for a gun found in his home when police responded to an argument involving his girlfriend. He pleaded to misdemeanor weapons possession and was conditionally discharged.

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