Originally posted on Quora February 7, 2022
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When stickers and fliers representing a pro-white and anti-immigration group started popping up around the Rochester, New York, suburb of Brighton last fall, it sent a shock throughout the community.
The posts, which often featured a variation of the name and logo for the group, Identity Evropa, did not feature any direct calls for violence or hate speech. But community members felt threatened by the presence of the fliers in public places, said Brighton Supervisor Bill Moehle.
This week, a 23-year-old University of Rochester senior has been identified by Brighton police as the suspect behind three of the posts.
Christopher N. Hodgman, 23, of Bethesda, Maryland, has been cited with three counts of violating the Brighton Town Code for placing the fliers on public structures. In a press conference Monday, police said they were able to identify Hodgman by pulling his fingerprints from adhesive tape used on three of the fliers.
The citations are not criminal charges, and are not related in any way to the content or nature of the material Hodgman allegedly posted, Brighton Police Chief Mark Henderson said.
By using a town code violation to penalize an individual for posting flyers on behalf of a pro-white, anti-immigration group, a Rochester attorney said, the Brighton Police Department violated his client's First Amendment right to free speech.
"The problem is there's selective enforcement here of the town ordinance based upon a constitutionally protected exercise of speech," said Donald Thompson, an attorney who specializes in cases involving civil rights violations. "This is not anywhere close to the line. It is really equivalent to a lost dog poster."
Brighton police cited 23-year-old Christopher Hodgman, a senior at the University of Rochester, with three separate violations of the town code for posting the flyers to public utilities and property last fall. The violations each carry a $250 fine and up to 15 days in jail.
Thompson, Hodgman's attorney, said if the ordinance prohibiting the posting of flyers to public spaces was uniformly and constantly enforced, there would be no issue. But in this situation, he said, that is not the case.
"Why, in this particular instance, is that violation being enforced?" Thompson said. "Well, it’s because of the content of the speech, as they perceive it, and that’s the problem. It's an attempt to chill speech based up on constitutionally protected content."
Police were able to pull fingerprints from adhesive tape used on three separate flyers to identify Hodgman — an endeavor that Thompson said seems largely out of proportion to the mildness of the violation itself.
"(This is) an investigation heretofore never seen for a town ordinance violation," Thompson said. "I've had murder cases that were not investigated as thoroughly."
Thompson said that the flyers, which featured the name and logo of a white nationalist organization called Identity Evropa, were no more unconstitutional in nature than a lost dog poster or a flyer advertising an apartment for rent.
Brighton's codes do prohibit the posting of flyers on public property, but Brighton and Rochester border each other, and it's not always clear where one city ends and another begins in such metropolitan scenarios.
The City of Rochester, which is much larger than Brighton, includes this on its official website:
Make and Post FlyersHang flyers in heavy traffic areas and public spaces near where your pet was last seen. Good old fashioned leg work is still the best way to locate a missing pet. Refer to the Lost Pet Resource Packet for a sample flyer that you can use.
Obviously, if a resident of Rochester hangs flyers for his lost dog, and he hangs some of them in adjacent Brighton, the police would not go through the trouble of extracting fingerprints from the tape to find the culprit, and then prosecute the dog-owner to the fullest extent of the law. Any reasonable person can see that this was selective enforcement.
One final note: The Identity Evropa movement is no more racist than the Congressional Black Caucus. Both organizations have exclusive membership based on race, both advocate for their own people, and neither advocates violence or any criminal activity. The main difference between the two is that the Congressional Black Caucus has a lot of power, while Identity Evropa has practically no power. Hence, if "discrimination + power = racism," then the Congressional Black Caucus is racist, but not Identity Evropa. The SPLC should not be controlling which speech is protected, and which speech is suppressed by the police, and prosecuted by the courts. This is a case where "Defund the Police" actually makes sense.