https://www.kcrg.com/content/news/Iowa- ... 22871.html
Iowa City Police investigating hateful flyers delivered to certain neighborhoods
By Aaron Scheinblum {Oy Veh!}
Posted: Fri 7:32 PM, Dec 27, 2019
IOWA CITY, Iowa (KCRG) - Iowa City Police says they are investigating flyers with racist messages that were delivered to some neighborhoods on the east side of the city.
The flyers were attached to Little Village Magazine, produced in Iowa City, but staff said the messages absolutely did not come from them.
"I was disappointed it was happening again," said Paul Brennan, the News Director for Little Village Magazine. "I think we all were."
Brennan said he heard people were getting issues of the magazine from Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, and the Quad Cities area, but some were delivered with a message that they did not produce or promote.
"We only found out about it, well, we find out about it through readers," Brennan said. "Generally they contact us either baffled because this is nothing like us, or outraged on our behalf."
The issues were delivered at people's homes, atypical from Little Village Magazine's distribution method delivering to certain stands. The ones in question have stickers from the National Alliance. According to the Anti-Defamation League, National Alliance was "the most formidable presence in the white supremacist world" for decades, but more recently has shrunk to a much smaller group.
Brennan said the culprit in this case is acting "cowardly."
"What you're seeing is sort of low-rent attempts at intimidation," Brennan said.
Brennan also showed the issues being hand-delivered by someone are not the most recent issue of the magazine, suggesting it could be recycled copies that are being used to distribute these messages.
"In this case, for example, what has been showing up on people's lawns in Cedar Rapids and in Iowa City is an issue of ours from May," Brennan said. "We use a recycling center in the Quad Cities area for our excess magazines. They could very well be getting it from that."
Iowa City Police says it has received at least four complaints about the flyers just this week.
"We want to make sure we're looking at the totality of them," said Capt. Bill Campbell of the Iowa City Police Department. "Are they a freedom of speech issue, or do we have something where we have harassment and then, in turn, perhaps a hate crime that goes on? So we're going to be looking at all aspects of that."
Campbell said anyone else who has received a similar flyer should contact police.
"If there's something that's going on behind the scenes that's going to make people uncomfortable or going to make people tense, we want to make sure that we can address that," Campbell said. "And if there are criminal violations that are going on in the process of this, we're going to address them."
Campbell said with Iowa City's recently adopted hate crime ordinance, they are looking more carefully at the information they receive to differentiate between free speech and hate speech, saying they are "walking a fine line."
"Where the hate crime ordinance really comes into play is when we deal with someone who's handing out something and it's specifically addressing or specifically intended to intimidate or alarm or annoy the receiver, and they're a part of that protected category or that protected class" Campbell said.
"Even more broadly, can the person be where they were when they dropped the item or presented that," Campbell said. Are they trespassing, and again, what type of harassment might be occurring with the speech?"
Iowa City police captain is trying really hard to find a crime in free speech activity. Also, since there's no legal definition of "hate speech" in America, how did Iowa City and their cops intend to invent one when the First Amendment prevents them from doing so?