WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP — Flyers with hate speech promoting white supremacy were found scattered around a Washington Township neighborhood over the weekend.
On Sunday morning, people on certain streets in Washington Twp. woke up to find “little baggies” with flyers inside, Montgomery County Sheriff Rob Streck told News Center 7.
“There were flyers that said different sayings on it, definitely hate speech no matter how you look at it,” Streck said.
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Streck said the flyers had statements such as “We have to protect our white children,” and “It’s okay to be white.”
“Even though it was random, and there was no certain groups targeted, it didn’t matter who was in the house, everybody got the same thing, but it definitely is one of those things that is considered hate speech. It’s just sickening that people were out throwing these around the neighborhoods,” he said.
The act of distributing flyers is generally not a criminal offense, so Streck said following up with criminal charges can be complicated.
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“So if we have a suspect, we could look at something as easy as littering, charge him with that minor misdemeanor. If we could get them to confess that there was malice intent there, we can look at menacing, some other things like that,” he said. “It is very hard when someone is just distributing something out into the public to get criminal charges on it. If we had a suspect, we would look at everything and anything that we could do.”
Streck said deputies have been door to door looking for Ring doorbell or surveillance footage to try and get license plates or a suspect description.
“They’ve interviewed about everybody they can to see if anybody saw anything,” he said.
If there is evidence of an offense, Streck said they would follow it up with every criminal charge they can determine along with the Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office.
Anyone who saw anything or has information can contact the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office.
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