Police have found at least five more white nationalist stickers posted on various street signs, parking signs and fire hydrants around west Ames, according to Ames Police Commander Geoff Huff.

Police were called out to various locations around West Ames Thursday and Friday to removed the stickers and believe that they were put up at random with no specific target. 

This new round of vandalism comes less than a week after a similar white nationalist sticker was found on a campaign sign for school board candidate Monic Behnken in the yard of an Ames home. Police say that sticker in particular targeted the homeowner and was “more antisemitic in nature.”

In both cases, the stickers read, “Are you sick of bankers, biased media, pol. establishment? Join the movement,’  and included a web address to the white nationalist site The Right Stuff.

The words “bankers, biased media, pol. establishment” were each surrounded with three sets of parentheses, or “echoes,” which refer in an antisemitic nature to Jews.

The stickers also feature a “jera,” a symbol that, despite its many innocuous meanings, as been adopted by white nationalists, according to police.

“These are obviously troubling because they are antisemitic, that’s kind of the idea behind them,” Huff said. “It’s pretty troubling to us that that [the stickers are] cropping up in our community. That’s not who we are as a community.”

Police say that since the stickers were posted on traffic signs and fire hydrants without permission, they violate the law. 

“This has gone beyond free speech. Clearly we have to protect everybody’s right to say what they want to say, ” Huff said. “But these are violating the law because this is criminal mischief by putting them on our signs.”

Police are asking for the public’s help in identifying those responsible for the stickers, and suspect more material may continue to show up in Ames and on campus.