Kathleen Hopkins

@Khopkinsapp

RED BANK - Some people here and in neighboring Fair Haven awoke Monday to find purported Ku Klux Klan fliers tossed on their lawns on the day set aside to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., police said.

Police Chief Darren McConnell said the department received “numerous calls’’ from residents about apparent white supremacist fliers they discovered on their front lawns on Monday morning.

The fliers have a photograph of King with the letters “KKK’’ and the words, “Smash Communism,’’ on either side of his picture. The text on the fliers disparages the slain civil rights leader.

At the top is the heading, “Loyal White Knights,’’ and at the bottom, there is a notation for a website and a purported phone number for a “Klan Hotline.’’

“People were very upset by it,’’ McConnell said of the fliers. “They were discouraged by the message that was put on them. Obviously, it was done on this day in particular because (the fliers) had remarks about Dr. King.’’

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The fliers were placed in plastic, zip-top bags that also contained rocks to weigh them down, McConnell said.

They seemed to be tossed at random at homes east of Prospect Avenue in Red Bank and in neighboring Fair Haven, he said.

“It wasn’t every single house,’’ he said. “There was no pattern whose house they were left on.’’

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The police chief said he suspects they were thrown from a car because the amount of ground that was covered would not likely be accomplished by someone who was on foot. He said the fliers were probably distributed on Sunday night so that people would wake up and find them on Monday.









Despite the offensive nature of the fliers, McConnell said at first blush it does not appear a bias crime has been committed. That is because there are no threats made in the fliers and there doesn’t appear to be any intended victim, he said. Despite that, police are investigating the incident and have notified the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office in the event it turns out that the activity is, indeed, criminal.

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Kathleen Hopkins: 732-643-4202; Khopkins@app.com