Sheriff's deputies were investigating the reports Monday.

A handful of Gainesville area residents say they awoke Monday to hateful flyers in their driveways.

The notes were found in zipped bags, accompanied by peppermints or loose change to weigh them down.

The letters purport to be penned by “Loyal White Knights KKK” and take aim at civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday Monday was a national holiday. Another letter in the packet complains about the cost of illegal immigration, with a headline that reads “The Cost of the Jew’s (sic) Open Border Policy.”

The Alachua County sheriff’s deputies investigated the notes, which were mainly distributed in a few neighborhoods near Santa Fe College, but not targeted to any specific group.

Lt. Brett Rhodenizer said the letters are protected free speech, however unsavory the message.

“There’s nothing in the content of the notes that constitutes a crime, as is,” he said.

He added that the content of the notes could be considered a hate crime in the future should other crimes occur.

Mick Marino, who lives on Northwest 23rd Avenue, said his wife Suzy went out to retrieve their copy of The Sun when she came back inside with the letter and tears in her eyes.

“I just put it down right away,” he said. “It’s a hate message.”

The Marinos reported the incident to the sheriff’s office. Mick said his neighbor went around the neighborhood to pick up the letters, and estimated there were about 15 of them.

“I have never, in the 45 years I’ve lived here, ever been confronted with this type of thing,” he said. “It’s very, very alarming and upsetting.”

Geraldine Nichols reported a similar packet in her driveway after her husband found the note around 8:30 a.m. Nichols said the other two driveways in her Northwest 63rd Terrace neighborhood had baggies as well.

Another resident of Northwest 59th Terrace said her daughter left their house around 11 a.m. and returned a couple hours later to find a note on their driveway.

Rhodenizer said sheriff's officials don't know how many letters were distributed because not every letter was reported. He added that anyone who has received a note can simply throw it away.

The Loyal White Knights is the largest and most active group in the KKK, according to the Anti-Defamation League website. The group is based in Pelham, North Carolina.

Published reports have noted that the Klan have used the candy bag flyers to try to remind people of their existence. But the ADL says the message from the flyers, that the KKK is a growing and powerful entity, are false. The group has actually decreased in size.

By distributing flyers, the KKK intends to stir up enough controversy and publicity to draw interest, or, at the least, spread its message.

The ADL maintains a list of some 70 such similar candy-bag incidents nationwide in 2014, including drops in Union and Volusia counties.

There are a number of similar reports from the past couple years, including Texas and Virginia in 2017 and New York in 2018.