TIBURON (CBS SF) — Marin County authorities have joined law enforcement agencies across the San Francisco Bay Area in a hunt for the source of anti-Semitic hate flyers that have been delivered to homes from Tiburon to Palo Alto.
In joint announcement, the Marin County District Attorney Office and the county’s police chiefs association said flyers have showed in Tiburon and the unincorporated Wildhorse Valley neighborhood of western Novato.
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“The flyers were usually in a plastic bag with rice and thrown on driveways from a moving vehicle,” the joint statement said. “In addition to listing the names of prominent national health care officials, the flyers implied a connection between people of Jewish faith and the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Marin County District Attorney Lori E. Frugoli called the flyers “infuriating and repugnant.”
“We reject this hateful behavior,” she said. “The DA’s Office remains committed to working with our community, law enforcement and Not in Our Town to track and prosecute these crimes when we are able.”
Over the last weekend, dozens of anti-Semitic flyers were discovered in several Palo Alto neighborhoods. The Palo Alto Police Department said they were searching for the source of the flyers that were found on Feb. 20. and were “similar to those found in other communities in recent months.”
The flyers listed numerous federal government officials, identifying them as Jewish.
“The flyers directed people to a website with various videos espousing certain viewpoints, many on topics of political nature,” Palo Alto Police said.
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Police Chief Robert Jonsen said that his department was currently determining if criminal charges can be brought forward to the District Attorney for review.
“These types of acts are a reminder to all of us that hate crimes and hate incidents are serious and are taken seriously by the personnel of the Palo Alto Police Department,” he said.
Authorities in Berkeley reported a similar incident on the same day when hundreds of residents of the Berkeley hills complained about getting plastic bags left on their doorsteps with anti-Semitic messages over the weekend.
The Berkeley Police and City Council issued a joint statement condemning the action.
Investigators said the messages were delivered at random in Berkeley to a neighborhood by “a small, fringe White Supremacist extremist group that targets Jewish communities as well as other minority groups throughout the Bay Area.”
The release noted that multiple cities across the US have “been hit with identical anti-Semitic screeds blaming the COVID pandemic on the Jewish people.”
“As the center of the free-speech movement, Berkeley has always supported people’s rights under the first amendment. But let’s be clear — the Berkeley City Council and our community soundly reject and condemn ANY hate filled messages and any inference to discrimination of any kind to any person or group,” the statement read.
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It went on to assure Berkeley’s Jewish residents that the community would stand together “to reject anti-Semitic messages and all forms of hate speech.”
