A Kentucky man and self-proclaimed Ku Klux Klan chief who was cited for distributing flyers selling the hate group round a number of Ohio cities was not too long ago discovered responsible throughout a bench trial.
Police say William Bader focused a number of cities, together with the traditionally Black village of Lincoln Heights, which drew nationwide consideration final month after greater than a dozen neo-Nazis held a rally on a freeway overpass close to the city limits and have been caught on visitors cameras flying flags adorned with swastikas.
The demonstration heightened tensions locally and led to the formation of an armed neighborhood watch that caught Bader driving round city scattering KKK propaganda flyers days after the rally.
Police caught up with Bader within the close by city of Lockland and issued him a quotation for littering.
In accordance with the Cincinnati Enquirer, bodycam footage exhibits Bader admitting to police that he scattered about 4,000 flyers in 16 cities alongside I-75 and had simply run out when officers caught up with him. He even admitted that each propaganda pamphlet distributed to the Better Cincinnati space since 2022 had come from his group.
“It wasn’t simply me,” he stated to the officer. “There’s fairly a couple of of us out tonight.”
A search of his automobile yielded the invention of a number of flyers, a white sheet that’s “generally worn by KKK members,” and a selfmade banner that was held on the overpass within the aftermath of the neo-Nazi rally that learn, “Peace and Love.”
However throughout his courtroom continuing, he walked his admission again and denied any wrongdoing. He argued that officers didn’t witness the flyer distribution firsthand and claimed that his fingerprints weren’t on the flyers, the courtroom was corrupt, and that he directed his members to throw the flyers, however by no means threw them himself.
The choose fined him $150 for every of the 2 littering citations and courtroom charges that may spherical up his complete prices to roughly $700.
The 47-year-old instructed authorities that from the time he was a toddler, he was raised as a member of the KKK till he was appointed an “imperial wizard” of his native department.
“Take into consideration in the event you have been on the opposite facet and in the event you have been within the different particular person’s sneakers,” the choose requested Bader. “What would the opposite particular person say? Ask your self that.”
“I grew up like this and no person’s going to alter me,” Bader stated, pointing then to the choose, prosecutor, and officers who ticketed him. “Not you, not you, not you.”
