Police reviewing racist flyers in northern Idaho

SANDPOINT – Police in northern Idaho say they are actively reviewing false flyers depicting racist images that target key leaders in Sandpoint.

The Bonner County Daily Bee on Tuesday reported mailings have been distributed to businesses and residents falsely representing the views of Mayor Shelby Rognstad and his family.

Sandpoint law enforcement is asking the public to notify the police if they have received one of the flyers.

“There is a fine line between protected free speech and criminal harassment, defamation or stalking,” officials said in a prepared statement on Monday.

Such flyers have been circulating around Sandpoint since April, sparking harsh rebuke over the past month from Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter and other lawmakers.

“Idaho joins the rest of the nation and the world in condemning white-supremacist violence and bigotry of any kind,” Otter said in a prepared statement early last month provided at a meeting in opposition to the flyers

An email was distributed last month showing Rognstad in a Nazi gas chamber with the cartoon Pepe the Frog – an image that has been become a white supremacist symbol – ready to push the button. The emails contained a link to a YouTube video posted by a white supremacist group.

Other flyers have targeted members of the Bonner County Human Rights Task Force and local media members, while some have argued African-Americans will ruin Sandpoint because of their genetic inferiorities.

During the 2016 election, Rognstad was the target of robocalls branding him as a feminist who would purge blue collar Caucasians in favor of low-income minorities.