Jewish leaders want antisemitic flyers charged as hate crime, not littering

After someone tossed dozens of bags of antisemitic propaganda around a couple of Martin County neighborhoods on Aug. 5, the Sheriff’s Office said the likeliest course of action if they catch the suspect would be a littering charge.

Many people would consider the scattering of hate-filled flyers targeting a marginalized group to be a hate crime, but Florida law can get murky when classifying these kinds of offenses.

To charge a hate crime in Florida requires certain criteria that aren’t always easy to prove in court, such as the suspect’s intentions and the victim’s perception of the events. Despite the technicalities of the law, some of Martin County’s Jewish leaders believe the incident should be considered a hate crime.

“I’m not naïve, I understand there’s a fine line in the law, but it’s clear this hate literature was against the Jewish people,” said Rabbi Matthew Durbin of Temple Beit HaYam, a synagogue in Stuart about four miles from where the hate literature was found. “It should be a hate crime, for no other reason than it’s being used against a targeted group of people.”

The flyers depict images such as Stars of David drawn on the foreheads of Jewish members of Congress, and they contained statements blaming Jewish people for various events and social issues.

“Look, I get it. If I throw a cup of coffee out of my car, that’s littering,” Durbin said. “But for one to dump a tremendous amount of hate material that is targeted against the Jewish people, that's not a littering charge.”

Littering or hate crime?

A typical littering charge is a noncriminal offense, which is punishable by a fine of $150.

Even if littering ends up being the only way to charge the suspect, law enforcement could still amp up the penalties depending on the content of the flyers, said David Lustgarten, assistant state attorney in charge of the Martin County office.

“As long as the purpose of throwing down this literature is to intimidate or threaten the homeowner, it would be a first-degree misdemeanor,” Lustgarten said.

Lustgarten was referring to a bill that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed while in Jerusalem last year that allows law enforcement to make littering on private property a criminal offense if it was for the purpose of “intimidating or threatening the owner, resident or invitee of such property.”

Under the “ Public Nuisances ” bill, antisemitic littering on private property can also be reclassified as a hate crime if it contains a “credible threat," which bumps the charge to a third-degree felony.

The Martin County Sheriff’s Office has not publicly determined whether the antisemitic propaganda was for purposes of intimidation or if it contained a credible threat.

Proving a hate crime under Florida law

A hate crime is not its own separate charge in Florida law . Rather, the classification of hate crime is what’s called an “enhancement statute,” which serves to bump up criminal penalties if prejudice is proven. For example, if someone is caught physically assaulting someone, their third-degree felony could be bumped up to a second-degree felony.

There also needs to be proof that the suspect “perceived, knew or had reasonable grounds to know or perceive” that the victim was within the targeted group.

“In the Martin County case, because of that perception component in Florida’s hate crime law, you’d have to prove the defendant knew the victims were Jewish,” Lustgarten said.

This isn’t the Treasure Coast’s first brush with this type of hateful literature. Residents in a Vero Beach neighborhood discovered similar bags of antisemitic flyers strewn across their lawns last year, apparently printed from the same online source as the flyers dumped in Martin County.

The group behind the flyers provides detailed instructions on how to distribute the material, prompting their so-called “paperboys” to fill weighed-down Ziploc bags with the printouts and fling them in residential areas late at night while wearing masks.

The growing trend of hate

These incidents aren’t endemic to the Treasure Coast. In 2022, crimes against property, such as littering and vandalizing, accounted for about 33% of the reported hate crimes in the state, according to the Florida Attorney General’s Office.

As the country sees a rise in cases of antisemitism, some Florida counties have taken it upon themselves to curb the vitriol.

For example, the Jacksonville City Council proposed a bill that would increase penalties for already established offenses, such as littering, noise pollution and light projections, if their intention was “expressing animosity, hostility or malice” based on factors such as the victim’s race, religion or sex.

The proposed legislation would also take code enforcement away from local law enforcement and place it on a county judge. Opponents argue that further enhancing penalties won’t quell hatred, and that there should be stronger focus on stemming its source with education and community engagement.

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Rabbi Durbin believes there should be a balance between penalizing these offenses and attacking the problem of intolerance at its roots.

“Locally, I’d love to see a campaign of educational awareness. Instead of calling in the rabbi for one festival a year, I’d love to see sensitivity training on a multi-faith level," Durbin said. He points to the temple's preschool program that serves children who are mostly non-Jewish, allowing them to learn about the Jewish faith and people so they will grow up to be more tolerant and accepting adults.

"I put my faith in God, but I also put my faith in humanity.”

Jack Le mnus is a TCPalm enterprise reporter. Contact him at jack.lemnus@tcpalm.com or 772-409-1345.

This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Jewish leaders want antisemitic flyers charged as hate crime, not littering