On Feb. 18, some Eugene residents woke up to flyers and pamphlets spread across their driveways and yards. Once again, a national antisemitic group had spread their propaganda in Eugene.
“They’re usually in a plastic baggie of some sort and weighted down with something,” Officer Chris Harrison of the Eugene Police Department said.
Harrison said there had been other incidents recently in the north Eugene area off of River Road and Springfield.
He said he recognizes that the propaganda and packaging are similar to a more national trend spreading across the United States.
“The rhetoric in the flyers and the photos and the packaging looks almost identical to many, many cases across the country. So we looked at them, and obviously, our take is that we don’t condone that type of hate speech in our city or county or community in general,” Harrison said.
According to Harrison, although EPD does not condone the message being spread, there is no criminal offense associated with spreading these pamphlets.
“It’s awful. I wish it didn’t happen, but it’s not a criminal thing,” he said.
While there are no confirmed hate groups residing in Lane County, according to Harrison, he does recognize there are people within the community who sympathize with the message being spread in these flyers. The flyers could have come from someone outside the local community, he said.
“It could very well be someone that you know, passed through and hit communities all up and down I-5,” Harrison said.
Harrison said EPD usually meets with the Human Rights Commission once a month to talk about trends and cases.
EPD has a long standing relationship with leaders in the Jewish community, Harrison said, which is one of the things they’re doing to combat the rise of antisemitism.
According to Harrison, EPD works closely with the FBI to follow the trends of these antisemitic groups.
FBI Special Agent Ryan Dwyer is the Civil Rights Program Coordinator for the Portland Field Office, where he follows hate crimes and color of law investigations throughout the state.
“We in law enforcement and certainly we in the FBI, we’re concerned about threats of violence, threats of action or acts of violence. So our investigations come into play when there’s a threat of violence or advocacy of a sort of force by a particular group,” said FBI Special Agent Ryan Dwyer.
According to The United States Department of Justice, “hate” in regard to hate crimes means bias against people or groups with specific characteristics that are defined by the law.
On Feb. 25, neo-Nazi groups observed a day of hate that would nationally target Jewish communities and centers. Dwyer said there were no specific events on that day in Eugene but stresses it is important for communities to be aware.
“It is very important for folks to know that they can and should report these things to law enforcement. If there is no specific threat of violence, law enforcement may not conduct an investigation, [but] they’ll certainly take that information,” he said.
Dwyer said that communication between local communities and groups can help law enforcement better protect vulnerable communities, including different races, religions and LGBTQ groups.
“It’s important for them to know that they can communicate with law enforcement about the challenges and threats that they are feeling to their security so that law enforcement can be responsive to that,” Dwyer said.
Dwyer said a national increase in hate crimes has led the FBI to change how it deals with and monitors these actions.
“In 2021, the FBI raised civil rights, of which hate crimes is our focus, to our top criminal priority,” he said.
According to the FBI’s official website, the change came with the Hate Crimes Prevention act of 2009 and allowed the Bureau “to also investigate crimes committed against those based on biases of actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or gender.”
Dwyer said hate crimes are vastly underreported nationally and in the state of Oregon.
Dwyer said there are three main factors that have caused the statistical jump.
One reason, he said, is the fact that there are more hate crimes occurring in general.
“Second, people are reporting them more. Third, law enforcement is getting better and how we track these,” Special Agent Ryan Dwyer said.
One of the FBI’s priorities is encouraging the reporting of hate crimes and making sure minority groups have access to resources to help fight the spread of hate ideology.
Dwyer attended a City Club of Eugene meeting addressing the antisemitic propaganda in Eugene. Rabbi Meir Goldstein, a senior Jewish educator at Oregon Hillel Foundation and a Judaic studies instructor at the University of Oregon, spoke during the City Club meeting about how he saw the at-large community respond to the “day of hate.”
“We had members of all different religious groups and community organizations come and stand outside of the synagogue and form a ring around it to make sure that those ill-doers wouldn’t have an opportunity to do so,” Goldstein said.
