Police investigating after racially offensive letters left in Arkansas mailboxes

The Jonesboro Police Department said Thursday that it has opened an investigation into racially offensive notes toward blacks that were left in residents’ mailboxes earlier this week.

Police said in a report that they were called about 9:03 a.m. Tuesday to the 3200 block of Parkwood Road in Jonesboro, where a homeowner told authorities that she had found a letter using racially offensive language.

That letter also contained a death threat and a link to an online community of white supremacists, authorities said.

After leaving that residence, a responding officer was approached about another letter that used similar offensive and threatening language. The letter had been sent to someone’s house in the 3300 block of Fairview Drive, just south of Parkwood Road, police said.

While driving through the neighborhood off Red Wolf Boulevard, police later found multiple additional letters lying on the side of roads or in residents’ yards, according to the report.

Those notes were found in the areas of Red Wolf Boulevard, Fairfield Street, Race Street and Highland Avenue, authorities said in a news release Thursday.

“The notes were all written by hand in marker, and had some form of derogatory statement on them,” the responding officer said.

In Thursday’s news release, police said it was not immediately clear if the white supremacist group, Stormfront, was responsible for the letters.

“The city of Jonesboro and the police department find the words contained in the notes to be ugly and repugnant, and the act of putting those out in a neighborhood is reprehensible, regardless of who did this,” said Police Chief Rick Elliott in a statement.

He added that such “hateful conduct has no place in our community.”

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