Hunter
01/02/23
The Cedar Rapids Police Department believes officers acted appropriately after responding to a neo-Nazi group hanging anti-Semitic signs in November.
KCRG TV reports the department has come under scrutiny worldwide after more than 1.8 million people saw a police officer’s body camera footage from the incident on Tik Tok and Reddit over a seven-day period. The signs, which said “Money runs the world and Jews own the banks. The truth is anti-Semitic” and “The Holocaust didn’t happen, but it should have”, hung over an Interstate 380 overpass on Wilson Avenue Southwest.
In the video, the two men guarding the sign were masked and declined to give their identity to officers. An unidentified woman confronted police because they didn’t immediately take the signs down.
Public Safety Communications specialist Mike Battien said in an email to TV9 the masked individuals denied ownership of the sign after they were told they would be cited because they were displayed unlawfully. The signs were then deemed abandoned property and removed.
Mark Stringer is the executive director for the ACLU of Iowa. He said that although undeniably offensive, the signs were initially protected by free speech, and agreed the officers acted appropriately. He added that all Iowans should use their 1st Amendment rights to speak out against anyone who spreads hatred against Jewish people and all religious-based bigotry.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, condemned the neo-Nazi group’s attempt to promote anti-semitic hate in Iowa in a release last week.
