An anti-Semitic sticker was posted downtown on Tucson’s Fourth Avenue recently, and more appeared on the University of Arizona campus. “The stickers appear to be the same type that surfaced here in Tucson approximately one year ago,” says Paul Patterson, Jewish community security director (see www.azjewishpost.com/2019/tucson-is-not-immune-to-hate-messaging-fliers-show). There also is the possibility that the sticker downtown was “tied to another incident that took place on Fourth Avenue when a local business was vandalized after publicly displaying support for George Floyd and Black Lives Matter,” Patterson notes.
He and Chelsea Gutierrez, also a security director working with the Southern Arizona Jewish community, have been following up with local police and the UA police force, which have been quick to investigate and remove stickers.
“Follow up with the Secure Community Network indicated that there have been no other reported incidents with the exact same sticker,” says Patterson, referring to the national security consultancy for U.S. Jewish organizations. “We also checked with the security director in Phoenix but there have been no similar incidents reported in or around the ASU campus.”
Patterson advises “the ‘see something, say something’ approach. If you see those stickers or other stickers associated with spreading hatred then report the incident to the police department. In addition individuals can call our office at (520) 647-8426 and we will be happy to look into the incident.
“We are not a big advocate of the social media sharing because it generally ends up being shared and reposted multiple times and giving the individual attempting to spread the message of hate a much larger platform and more exposure,” he adds.
Gutierrez, who starting working for the local Jewish community in March 2020, is a Tucson native and a graduate of Sahuaro High School and Grand Canyon University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in public safety and emergency management. She served eight years in the United States Air Force as an intelligence analyst before becoming a police officer with the Tucson Police Department. “I retired from TPD last year and was honored to join Paul in assisting our Jewish community as a security director,” she says.
