A number of residents along McPherson Circle and Dudley Court in the Countryside area found more information than they expected when they opened their Sunday newspapers Nov. 25.
According to the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, a number of residents on those two streets reported finding Ku Klux Klan recruiting flyers rolled up in newspapers and other publications on their driveways. Sheriff’s Office spokesman Kraig Troxell said the flyers appeared to be legitimate and contained out-of-state contact information.
He said the number of homes that received the flyers is not known.
The content of the flyers, he said, was primarily informational and did not appear to be directed against any particular ethnic group. "There’s no criminal intent that we’ve found so far," said Troxell, adding that distributing such information is not against the law. "Obviously, there’s a lot of concern out there when you receive something like this in your yard."
He said the flyers began with comments about stopping pornography and profanity and other "things you wouldn’t necessarily associate with the KKK" and concluded with a remark about protecting heritage, followed by the contact information for "KKK, LLC."
"It wasn’t the first time we’ve seen this in the county," said Troxell, noting that similar flyers had been distributed in the Waterford and Sterling areas a few years ago. He said those flyers had been distributed in a similar fashion and contained the same contact information.
However, he said actual hate crimes are rare in Loudoun County. "They’re mostly by juveniles who don’t really know what their doing," he said, adding that the slurs used sometimes did not even match the victim’s ethnicity.
<1b>— Mike DiCicco