NYPD Arrests Artist Painting Message of Support for Unhoused Man
Helena Münninghoff, a formerly unhoused resident of the East Village, was arrested for painting a call for help for her friend on a construction fence.
A Lower East Side woman was arrested yesterday, April 16, after painting a message seeking help for an unhoused friend on a green construction fence barricading an empty lot. The Village Sun reported that 57-year-old Helena Münninghoff, a formerly unhoused resident of the neighborhood, had painted the words "HELP RICKY ... BACK ON HIS FEET" at the corner of Third Street and Avenue C in Manhattan in support of her friend, Ricky Cole, who is recovering from spinal surgery and in the process of regaining his mobility.
Less than an hour later, two patrol cars were on the scene and Münninghoff was in handcuffs after the police found her painting on the fence, which had long been scrawled on and stripped of tattered old wheat-pasted posters. The Stop Shopping Choir of Reverend Billy, an NYC-based performance group whose secular pop-up project known as Earth Church was hosting a "sainting" nearby, approached the scene in protest of Münninghoff's arrest, criticizing the attending officers for wasting tax dollars and not having anything better to do.
Münninghoff told the Village Sun about the rocky start to her friendship with Cole, who had initially attacked her following the death of his mother in 2015, as well as her life as a formerly unhoused resident in the East Village. When asked if she was an artist, Münninghoff, an established fixture of the neighborhood considering how she greeted multiple friends passing by during her interview, shrugged and just said she was a "human being."
A video of the arrest and adjacent protest shared with Hyperallergic shows at least five officers in a circle around Münninghoff, who had already been restrained, before escorting her into the closest patrol car to get booked in at the 9th Precinct "just down the block." The protestors began chanting "Let her go, let her go" once Münninghoff was seated in the back of the vehicle, stating that this was her neighborhood.
The New York Police Department did not immediately respond to Hyperallergic's request for comment.
As the vehicle holding Münninghoff peeled out of the block, the group began singing Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir's original song, "Now Bird," protesting the social-environmental impacts of "Cop City" in Atlanta, Georgia.
Münninghoff was held in a cell at the 9th Precinct for nearly four hours until she agreed to accept a desk appearance ticket. Upon her release, Münninghoff stood by her actions, stating that she had never been arrested before.
"I’ve worked here in good faith," she told the Village Sun. "There’s a homeless man that I’m helping. I was trying to tell them this, but they didn’t have the patience to listen.”
Savitri D, the director of Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, told Hyperallergic that Münninghoff was a great, caring neighbor to the Earth Church, and she's "always out there sweeping and cleaning [the block] and keeping it nice, talking to folks."
"That block was under scaffolding for years and that wall is usually covered with wild posters," Savitri continued. "They put them up in broad daylight all the time no problem, mostly fashion and big label music — the wall never stays bare longer than a day or two ... And here she is, making a community announcement and boom! Typical over-response by the NYPD."
