Double-fist your air horns and crank up the Creedance: those sneaky German nihilists artists who stole our flags from the Brooklyn Bridge towers last month have handed them over to the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, and they have finally been returned to the United States of God Bless America Bitches. "They are back on U.S. soil," an NYPD spokesman told the Daily News. Please spend the rest of today making a new version of the Hitler bunker scene from Downfall.
The German artists, Mischa Leinkauf and Matthias Wermke, said they replaced the American flags with white flags in the dead of night as an homage to Brooklyn Bridge designer John Roebling. The duo have a history of scaling public buildings for art, and came forward last week to claim responsibility. They said they didn't intend to freak New Yorkers out or make the NYPD looking like a bunch of clueless bumbling idiots, but merely wanted to "show the beauty of public space."
NYPD Commissioner Bratton assigned dozens of investigators to the case, pulling detectives off of other assignments in a failed attempt to track down the perpetrators. Days before the Germans came forward, Bratton said investigators had "a very good idea of who’s responsible," but so far there is no indication that the Germans were anywhere on the NYPD's radar.
Mayor de Blasio has said the Germans should be prosecuted, and Germany has an extradition treaty with the U.S. that requires them to extradite citizens for “burglary “ and “larceny” offenses. It's unclear if this is going to happen, but sources tell the News that Interpol has been asked for help in interviewing the suspects.
And NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller has confirmed that Leinkauf and Wermke are the likely suspects: "They have certain information about the manufacture of the flag, they’ve produced video of the flag flying on top of the tower that was obviously taken at night during the limited time the flags were up there, so there is little reason to doubt their claim."
The only way we're going to see real justice here is if AndrewAndrew climb to the top of the Reichstag building and steal a couple of their flags. See how the Germans like it when we "show the beauty" of their public space.
