The Cincinnati Police Department’s Intelligence Unit is investigating the origin of racist flyers containing Ku Klux Klan propaganda found Sunday morning in several Cincinnati neighborhoods.
“We are committed to maintaining a safe and inclusive environment for all residents and will continue to take all necessary actions to address and prevent the spread of hate in our communities,” CPD Lt. Jonathan Cunningham said in a statement released Sunday evening.
Mayor Aftab Pureval posted on Facebook that the city is “aware of the racist, hateful flyers that have been distributed in parts of our city,” adding that, “Outsiders bringing hate to our city is inexcusable. We will not become a city where hate succeeds.”
Madisonville Community Council president Kate Botos confirmed in a Facebook post that flyers promoting “divide and violence” were distributed in various parts of the neighborhood. Reports also suggest the flyers were found in College Hill and South Cumminsville.
A Facebook user commented a photo of one of the flyers under Madisonville Community Council’s post. The flyer, which matches other photos provided to CityBeat, calls on “white citizens of Cincinnati” to take up arms.
“Arm YOURSELVES WHITE CITIZENS of CINCINNATI,” the flyer reads. “The Cincinnati Police Chief, Cincinnati Mayor, Cincinnati City Manager, and all 9 of the Cincinnati City Council members ‘WILL NOT HELP YOU’ against vicious attacks from those of COLOR. Protect YOURSELVES against these LAWLESS THUGS.”
Madisonville resident Matt Solomon told CityBeat he awoke Sunday morning to find half a dozen flyers strewn in front of his house on Peabody Avenue. Solomon said it looks like the flyers were thrown from a car; he believes the timing and location were intentional.
“This appears to be a call to violence by white people against people of color in response to the fight that occurred late one night recently,” Solomon told CityBeat. “This neighborhood was likely sought out due to its relatively diverse makeup. These flyers were found 50 feet from a historically Black church. I can’t think of any other reason but to intimidate and terrorize.”
The flyer includes a QR code linking to a KKK website. The design resembles KKK flyers found in Over-the-Rhine last summer; both are marked with the name Trinity White Knights. The group is a known KKK group based out of Georgetown, Kentucky, that remained dormant until 2015, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Overall, distribution of flyers by KKK groups remained low in 2023, hovering around 18 known instances, but the Southern Poverty Law Center reports that Trinity White Knights accounted for most of these distributions.
The message in last summer’s flyer from the Trinity White Knights was a broader promotion of the Klan and included a phone number that, when dialed, played an automatic message promoting membership. The most recent flyers found in Cincinnati included several state-specific phone numbers with similar messages, but a number for Cincinnati returns a more specific, hateful message:
“We’ve got a lot of work to do in Ohio,” a man can be heard saying in the automatic message. “We’ve got ruthless negro thugs running the streets of Cincinnati and the suburbs taking the law into their own hands, and the bull-dyke sheriff of the county does nothing. The police chief of Cincinnati has no comment. We need to take care of the situation. We need your help.”
The Cincinnati ‘brawl’
The flyer comes after a viral brawl in Cincinnati made national headlines in July. Videos of a physical altercation near Elm and Fourth Streets in Cincinnati’s Downtown neighborhood quickly blew up online. One video in particular, which racked up millions of views, depicts a group of people punching and knocking a man to the ground where they continued to punch and kick him. A woman is also seen being punched to the ground and appears unresponsive with blood on her face. Videos of the alleged attacks prompted widespread criticism, in part thanks to racist dog-whistle commentary from far-right conservative commentators like Libs of TikTok, Charlie Kirk and X owner-operator Elon Musk.
Musk shared a video of the brawl posted by Libs of TikTok that was captioned, in part, “White couple brutally beaten by black mob,” with Musk adding, “That guy almost killed this woman. Aggravated assault.” Studies have found “a clear increase” in the average number of posts on X containing hate speech — about 50% — following Musk’s purchase of X in 2022.
Six people have been charged in connection with the fight. A family member of a defendant told reporters following a court hearing on July 30 that he was spat on and called racial slurs in the lead-up to the fight. CPD said an investigation into the incident is ongoing.
When hate speech becomes criminal
Cincinnati has experienced numerous displays of white supremacist hate speech in 2025. In February, a group of masked neo-Nazis displayed swastika flags on a highway overpass near the historically Black Lincoln Heights neighborhood. Hamilton County prosecutor Connie Pillich said her office was investigating the neo-Nazis involved in that incident, but no charges have been filed at this time. In a previous interview with CityBeat about the legality of the neo-Nazi display, a University of Cincinnati legal scholar explained why hate speech is generally protected by the First Amendment.
“I think, as a general matter, the Supreme Court has been very permissive toward hateful speech that is likely to offend and even to deeply offend the general public or particular communities,” said Ryan Thoreson, assistant professor of constitutional law at UC’s College of Law. “A lot of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence has been particularly wary of what it calls a hecklers veto, this idea that if an audience strongly disagrees with a message, that they should be able to override the speaker’s right to convey that message, and that applies even when the speech is particularly upsetting to the audience who hears it.”
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Constitutional protections for hate speech can be observed in the seemingly light punishment of a man who allegedly distributed KKK flyers around several Cincinnati neighborhoods; the flyers called on immigrants to “self-deport.” William Bader was found guilty and ordered to pay littering fines and court costs, adding up to around $700.
While discussing the legal parameters of hate speech following the neo-Nazi demonstrations in Lincoln Heights, Thoreson said the courts are limited when prosecuting hate speech. He said narrow exceptions like true threats or incitement of violence can tip hate speech into criminal behavior.
“There’s a very high bar for what constitutes incitement to violence,” Thoreson said in February. “You have to show that the advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action, and that it’s likely to actually incite or produce that lawless action.”
A very recent example of law enforcement deeming hate speech as criminal was also in response to the viral brawl Downtown. On Friday, the FBI arrested a Dayton man for allegedly threatening to kill thousands of Black Cincinnatians in a post on X, formerly Twitter. According to the FBI, the user said they were “organizing mobs” to kill people in Cincinnati with a goal of killing “30k” by Sunday.
CPD reported the post to federal authorities who were able to trace the post back to Scott Michael Hanna, 30, of Dayton. Hanna was charged with making an interstate communication with a threat to injure, a federal crime punishable by up to five years in prison. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio is prosecuting the case.
“The FBI aggressively investigates those who threaten our communities with violence,” said FBI Cincinnati special agent in charge Elena Iatarola in a press release about Hanna’s case. “Threats like this impact the entire community and have serious consequences.”
While the post allegedly made by Hannah called on a killing Black citizens in Cincinnati specifically, it’s unclear if law enforcement is treating the language in the most recent KKK flyers as criminal threats.
CityBeat has asked the FBI if the agency is investigating the flyers; no response has been provided as of press time.
CPD is asking anyone with information regarding the flyers to contact Crime Stoppers at 513-352-3040.
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This article appears in Jul 23 – Aug 5, 2025.