Miles City Police investigating CDs distributed with Neo-Nazi propaganda

The Miles City Police Department confirmed it is investigating CDs with neo-Nazi propaganda that were sent to residents, weeks after investigating a vandalized Pride flag at a church in the community.

The police department said in a Facebook post earlier this week that such discs were “mass-mailed” to Miles City residents. Police Chief Doug Colombik said Wednesday he wasn’t sure why Miles City was a target.

“We had the Pride flag that was taken down,” Colombik said. “We don’t know if there’s somebody out there that is seeing this, and they decided to send some of their ideology on a CD to some community members. It’s hard to say.”

A couple of teenagers earlier admitted to taking down the Pride flag and planned to work with the church on restitution.

Colombik said residents started calling the department saying they received the CDs on Friday and received less than six discs total, all from Casper, Wyoming.

He said some community members put the discs in their computers.

“One of them had neo-Nazi propaganda on it, but the other one just had music,” he said.

KTVQ reported earlier this week the CDs contained files with “audio recordings and music that support the neo-Nazi movement, along with audio recordings of Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto called ‘Mein Kampf.’”

Cory Cheguis of Miles City told KTVQ he got the CD in the mail last Thursday and realized it was neo-Nazi propaganda after he put the disc in his car’s CD player.

Colombik said the CDs the department has received will be sent to authorities in Billings who can insert them into a safe CD to examine them.

“We’re not going to just stick a strange disc into our system here,” he said.

Colombik wasn’t sure if other communities received similar CDs, but said the department will be monitoring to see if that’s the case.

He recommends people who received a CD in the mail turn it over to police as opposed to throwing it away.

“There could be something on one disc that could be pretty sensitive or critical, and we want to be able to keep that – we don’t want somebody to destroy it,” he said.

Hate speech is protected by the First Amendment, but becomes a crime when it turns to intimidation or harassment motivated by someone’s actual or perceived race, gender, sexual orientation or disability.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights organization, condemned the distribution of neo-Nazi propaganda and in a press release, urged authorities to find the culprit.

“Communities in Montana and nationwide stand together in repudiation of the hatred this propaganda seeks to promote,” said CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper in a statement.

Nicole Girten is a reporter for the Daily Montanan, a nonprofit newsroom. To read the article as originally published, click here.