On Monday, residents in Rogue Valley neighborhoods awoke to zip-sealed plastic baggies on or near their property containing a written message: “It’s the jews.” The message came with a QR code that leads to the app Telegram Messenger and a group chat with anti-Semitic content, images of Adolf Hitler and promotional videos for nationalist groups.

Rogue Valley police departments are not investigating as criminal activity the baggies containing anti-Semitic material dropped off at people’s homes earlier this week.

“We don’t condone — certainly don’t condone — any of the material that’s contained in there,” said Lt. Geoff Kirkpatrick, public information officer with the Medford Police Department.

Medford police consulted with attorneys at the Jackson County District Attorney’s Office who said the messages are constitutionally protected speech that doesn’t cross into illegal behavior, he said.

On Monday, residents in Rogue Valley neighborhoods awoke to zip-sealed plastic baggies on or near their property containing a written message: “It’s the jews.” The message came with a QR code that leads to the app Telegram Messenger and a group chat with anti-Semitic content, images of Adolf Hitler and promotional videos for nationalist groups.

Kirkpatrick said, “The city of Medford — we denounce hatred and bias in any form, including the distribution of anti-Semitic propaganda, and we encourage our citizens to strive to overcome intolerance.”

Hundreds of baggies were left, many in driveways, generating calls to law enforcement in Medford, Ashland, Phoenix and Central Point. The baggies also held sand, it seemed, so the distributors could toss them while driving by. Talent seems not to have been hit, according to Police Chief Jennifer Snook.

Steven Portnoy, president of the board of trustees at Temple Emek Shalom in Ashland, said, “It’s not great, you know what I mean? It’s certainly created a lot of stir in the community, which is I’m sure what they were hoping for.”

The incident, he said, “certainly shows people who aren’t Jewish what the Jewish community faces, as far as an example of what is anti-Semitism. It’s not some kind of concept that happens other places — that it is something that is alive and happening here in the Rogue Valley.”

Ashland Police Chief Tighe O’Meara said that, while his department is looking into the incident, “no crime has presented itself yet to actually call it a criminal investigation.”

“We’re open to the possibility of criminal charges being substantiated, but as of yet we’re not at that point,” he said. “So we’d like to know who did it, even if we can’t do anything about it.”

For a bias crime to have occurred, victims must be specifically targeted because of their perceived status, such as their race, religion, sexual orientation, sexual identity and so on.

O’Meara said, “Bags filled with these hateful words and this hateful language being left randomly around town on people’s property — it just doesn’t get us there.”

Even if people of the Jewish faith are among those who received the baggies, unless they were personally targeted or threatened, a crime has not taken place.

“We’re looking into this from as many angles as we can, and we’re open to substantiating criminal behavior,” O’Meara said, “and we absolutely deplore the actions that were perpetrated against the entire Rogue Valley community Sunday night, Monday morning.

“But just as of yet, that criminal threshold hasn’t been hit.”

Central Point police Lt. Josh Abbott said that, without clear intent to harass specific individuals, the only crime that might fit would be offensive littering.

Abbott said his department still wants to find the offender out of concern for public safety and the possibility of future incidents.

“It’s not a crime yet, per se, but it could have that ability to turn into one later on,” he said.

Abbott urged people with clear security camera footage of any individuals or the vehicle involved to contact law enforcement.

Meanwhile, Portnoy recommends that anyone who received a baggie to call the nonemergency line of their local police department and report it, “so that it can be recognized as an active problem that we have in our community.”

The latest wave of anti-Semitism, including in Southern Oregon, comes amid the Israel-Hamas war, and follows years of rising hate crimes against Jews. The Federal Bureau of Investigation found a 25% increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes from 2021 to 2022, and that more than 50% of religion-related incidents were directed at Jews, who make up less than 3% of the U.S. population.