A black women arrested for throwing paint on the Black Lives Matter mural outside of Trump Tower Saturday recorded herself defacing two more of the city’s murals just hours after her release.
Bevelyn Beatty, 29, an anti-abortion activists from Staten Island, was arrested alongside Edmee Chavannes, 39, after they were seen smearing black paint over the bright yellow lettering of the Fifth Avenue mural, yelling ‘Re-fund the police’.
Both of the women were charged with criminal mischief and released a short while after. But within hours, Beatty would pull the stunt again, filming herself conducting a ‘drive-by painting’ in Harlem at Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, and another on Fulton Street, Brooklyn.
Chavaness was present for at least one of the other incidents, video uploaded by Beatty shows.
‘Ya’ll we did an all-nighter,’ Beatty gloated in a video posted to her Facebook page Sunday. ‘Let me tell you something, yesterday was epic.’
Bevelyn Beatty (above), 29, an anti-abortion activists from Staten Island, was arrested alongside Edmee Chavannes, 39, after they were seen smearing black paint over the bright yellow lettering of the mural, located on Fifth Avenue, yelling ‘Re-fund the police’
Both of the women (Chavannas shown right) were charged with criminal mischief and released a short while after. But within hours, Beatty would pull the stunt again, filming herself conducting a ‘drive-by painting’ in Harlem at Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, and another on Fulton Street, Bed-Stuy
The first of the three incidents occurred around in Manhattan at 3pm on Saturday. A video uploaded to Beatty’s Facebook page shows her sifting through more than a dozen cans of black paint in the back of a van, as a cop looks on and questions her but fails to intervene.
‘What are you guys doing with all that paint?’ the officer is heard asking, to which Beatty replies: ‘Decorating.’
‘Decorating? Probably not the decorating that we’re thinking of, right?’ the officer said. ‘What are you decorating?’
Beatty responds: ‘I’m black. Imma paint it black.’
The 29-year-old, dressed in a ‘Jesus Matters’ t-shirt, is then seen picking up one of the cans and walking past the officer across Fifth Avenue to the mural, dumping the paint onto the BLM letters while several passers-by watch on in shock.
‘Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter, right?’ she says in the video. ‘For the Black people. This is for the black people. They’re destroying business for black people. They’re looting for black people.
‘No, we’re not standing with Black Lives Matter. We want our police. Refund our police.’
An NYPD officer was injured after slipping on Beatty’s paint while attempted to detain her. The officer hit his arm and head on the asphalt hard and had to be helped back to his feet by two other cops.
Beatty was arrested along with Chavannes but the pair were released within hours. A second video was then uploaded to Beatty’s Facebook, titled ‘Harlem Drive By Painting’ on Saturday evening.
The first of the three incidents occurred around in Manhattan at 3pm Saturday
An NYPD officer falls during an attempt to detain Beatty, a protester pouring black paint on the Black Lives Matter mural outside of Trump Tower
Beatty was arrested, along with Chavannes but the pair were released within hours
In the footage, Beatty, along with a team of accomplices, pour paint out the back of her minivan as it drives slowly over the BLM mural at 7th Avenue and West 125th street.
A second car tails behind Beatty’s, driving over the paint to smear it across the road.
‘Jesus matters,’ Beatty is heard crying out. ‘Black lives can’t matter until Jesus’ life matters.’
Beatty, who bills herself as ‘the wife of Christ on Facebook’, was heckled by a number of bystanders outraged by her actions.
‘What’s wrong with you? You’re a black woman,’ a man is heard yelling. ‘What the f–k is wrong with you? You’re a black woman.’
One young man approaches the second vehicle, warning the vandals inside, ‘Wait, I’ve got something for you.’
The empty cans of paint Beatty’s team left on the roadside are then seen being hurled towards the two vehicles in addition to other debris.
‘Y’all are over,’ Beatty screams back at them. ‘You are all cancelled in the name of Jesus Christ.’
One of Beatty’s team, with a cross drawn in black paint across his face, then addresses the camera, saying: This is for Jesus, you need to get it together man … lives matter period. When you start making any one life matter above another – that’s just not what Jesus would do.
A third video then captured the same vandals, led by Beatty, descending on Fulton Street in Brooklyn early Sunday morning. Chavannes appears also to be at Beatty’s side.
A second video was then uploaded to Beatty’s Facebook, titled ‘Harlem Drive By Painting’ on Saturday evening
In the footage, Beatty, along with a team of accomplices, pour paint out the back of her minivan as it drives slowly over the BLM mural at 7th Avenue and West 125th street
A second car tails behind Beatty’s, driving over the paint to smear it across the road
‘Ladies and gentlemen, we’re in Brooklyn and it ain’t over,’ Beatty said. ‘Jesus matters. We’re taking our country back. We’re taking it back. And let me tell you something, the police need our help. They can’t stand alone. Don’t just sit by idly and watch your country go to the ground.’
‘Stand with your police force, vote for Trump, vote Republican, vote for Christians, and stand up, Christians,’she continues.
This time the group get out from the vehicles and begin painting over the mural in black using paint rollers. ‘Black lives don’t matter,’ the two women scream.
As a bystander attempts to intervene and question the women’s motives, the two women respond in a series of unintelligible cries. ‘They hate us,’ women are heard screaming. ‘Wake up. Black Lives Matter hates you.’
The group are eventually chased away by a number of outraged residents, who insist to Beatty that she’s ‘doing the wrong thing.’
Beatty’s arrest for the Trump Tower vandalism was the third time the sign has been marred.
Four people were arrested Friday around 4:15 p.m. and charged with dumping blue paint on the mural. Shortly after noon on Monday, a man walked up to the mural and poured red paint over it before running off.
Following her arrest by the NYPD, Beatty claims to have been treated like ‘royalty’ by the arresting officers.
‘The police expressed their HIGH APPRECIATION for what Bevelyn and Edmee stood up for today,’ a statement posted on the Facebook page of their At The Well Ministries reads.
‘They expressed their concerns and fears for their city. They are in fear for the sake of NYC and voiced that they need MORE people like them to help and stand up for what is RIGHT!’
A third video then captured the same vandals, led by Beatty, descending on Fulton Street in Brooklyn early Sunday morning
Chavannes appears also to be at Beatty’s side. The two women were confronted by a number of bystanders
As a bystander attempts to intervene and question the women’s motives, the two women respond in a series of unintelligible cries. ‘They hate us,’ women are heard screaming. ‘Wake up. Black Lives Matter hates you’
Beatty and Chavannes say they disagree with Black Lives Matter because the racial justice protesters do not necessarily oppose abortion
Beatty and Chavannes say they disagree with Black Lives Matter because the racial justice protesters do not necessarily oppose abortion.
‘They’re fraudulent hypocrites … and I believe all lives matter because God created them,’ Beatty told Fox News last month.
Both Beatty and Chavannes were arrested last month for protesting outside Planned Parenthood’s New York City headquarters. They were also charged with disorderly conduct when they disrupted a council meeting in a suburb of Fort Myers, Florida.
The duo also took an unwelcome trip to Kentucky to attend an Easter Sunday service held in defiance of the governor’s April coronavirus stay-at-home order.
In response to their latest stunts, community advocates who helped create the privately-funded Black Lives Matter mural in Harlem say the artwork was meant to heal the community, not divide it politically.
‘We were certainly aware of the attacks on the murals as a new trend. But we felt sure no one would come to Harlem to purposely do this,’ said Nikoa Evans Hendricks, Executive Director, Harlem Park to Park. ‘We know where our hearts were in creating this mural for Harlem and we also know how much love and support it received.
‘This was not a political statement as much as it was an embrace of a community that we as black women felt really needed it,’ Hendricks continued.