Windsor police seek help locating who posted white nationalist flyers, stickers

Stickers and flyers bearing the logo of a white nationalist group were found on several Windsor light poles this week, prompting local police to ask for help identifying who posted them.

Police removed the signs advertising “Identity Evropa,” from the city’s public fixtures on Monday after residents notified officers of the postings.

Some of the stickers and flyers were found at the Windsor Town Green, while others were located near the Cali Calmecac Language Academy, a Spanish-language immersion school, Windsor Police Chief Carlos Basurto said.

“These people are defacing town property with symbols of hate, racism and separatism, all of which we have no tolerance for in the town of Windsor,” Basurto said.

Identity Evropa has been labeled as a white supremacy organization by both the Anti-Defamation League, a group that fights anti-Semitism, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights nonprofit.

Members of the organization have actively denied that designation, arguing the group doesn’t believe white people should “rule over nonWhite people,” but rather that all racial groups should “have somewhere in the world to call home,” according to the group’s website.

The organization was founded in 2016 by Nathan Damigo, an Iraq War veteran and convicted felon from San Jose, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Members use posters, flyers, banners and stickers as their primary form of outreach, often targeting college campuses.

The group is known for their anti-immigration rhetoric, taking credit for a banner hung over the San Francisco Bay Bridge tunnel in January that read “Danger. Sanctuary city ahead.”

More recently, members protested in front of the New York City Mexican Consulate, chanting “Make America Great Again,” a video posted onto the Identity Evropa Twitter page in July showed.

On Monday, a poster found by the Windsor police department included the words “Our Generation. Our Future. Our Last Chance.”

While the group is allowed to exercise their free speech, Basurto said defacing public property is considered a misdemeanor crime that would result in a citation, though he didn’t know the cost.

Campbell, a city in Santa Clara County, saw similar signs in late June, prompting city workers to remove them, the Mercury News reported. Police officers in Loveland, Colorado, also removed the group’s stickers from the city’s light poles after they were found last week.

The Windsor Police Department didn’t know when the signs were placed around town, though the group’s Twitter page shared several photos of the stickers at the Windsor Town Green Monday.

Anyone with more information about the stickers and flyers should contact the police department’s Community Service Officer Bill Mikan at 707-838-1234.

You can reach Staff Writer Nashelly Chavez at 707-521-5203 or nashelly.chavez@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @nashellytweets.