KKK fliers found outside Rockville Centre, Wantagh homes, cops say

Several Ku Klux Klan fliers in resealable plastic bags were found outside Rockville Centre and Wantagh homes Wednesday, and police are investigating whether they were targeted against any specific person.

In Rockville Centre, a resident first alerted police, and an officer who responded found several other fliers, blown by the wind, said Lt. Chris Romance of the Rockville Centre police.

The fliers were dropped along Hempstead Avenue, near Lakeview Avenue, Romance said, and about 10 to 12 fliers have been collected as evidence.

"They were found on the curb lines and sidewalks of residential homes," he said.

Nassau police said four to five fliers in ziplocked bags, with rice inside to weigh down the bags, were also discovered on Stratford Road in Wantagh.

"We're going to be investigating it as an unusual incident," Det. Vincent Garcia said.

It's the latest distribution of fliers purporting to be from the KKK. In the past few months, several were found in Hampton Bays, Babylon and Shirley, prompting Suffolk County officials last month to gather publicly in denouncing the message behind the fliers.

Romance said detectives and Nassau police are investigating the origin of the fliers and why they were dumped on Hempstead Avenue. The fliers would be protected under freedom of speech, he said, but not if they were dumped in an effort to target someone.

"It's a crime to deliver and disseminate that type of information out there if you're targeting a specific person," Romance said.

So far, there's no evidence that a specific person was targeted, which would be considered a bias crime, he said.

Romance declined to detail what the fliers said.

The ones found in Suffolk were purportedly from a North Carolina-based group called the Loyal White Knights of the KKK and some referenced the recent shooting of an unarmed, black teenager by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.