BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) - Police said Tuesday they had identified a woman suspected of writing anti-Semitic fliers found at a City Council meeting but said the fliers would not be investigated as a crime.
The woman has a history of delivering similar documents to city offices and is believed to be mentally ill, the police chief said. She has no history of threats or actions beyond creating fliers, he said.
The fliers, found on Monday, portray recent political and social developments in the city as part of a plot to commit white Christian genocide, police said. They accuse Democratic Mayor Miro Weinberger of having a “Jewish demolition team” agenda.
Weinberger was on vacation out of the country and couldn’t be reached for comment Tuesday.
City councilors have received other messages with different content from people expressing their unhappiness with the council, said Jane Knodell, the council’s president.
“They’re not overtly anti-Semitic like this one is,” she said.
She said the police department is sending out the right message: “that if you see bias incidents, if you receive literature that is filled with hate speech, that we want to know about it,” she said. “We at the city council, we at the police department, even if it doesn’t cross the line from hate speech to a hate crime, we want to keep a record because that will help us if the perpetrator does ever, you know, take it to the next step.”
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