Threatening Letters Sent To Community Leaders In Garfield County
Sep 4, 2020, 8:15 PM | Updated: 8:17 pm
PANGUITCH, Utah – State and federal officials are investigating several threatening letters that were sent to city and county leaders in Garfield County over the last few days.
“Some of them are very concerned. It was threatening. Is it threatening,” said Garfield County Sheriff Danny Perkins.
He said leaders in all nine Garfield County towns received letters this week.
The letters claim to be from the same social justice group making demands of those towns.
“These letters, I’m not really sure what their agenda is, why they would go to these lengths to intimidate our city councilmen and our mayors, but they did,” said Perkins.
The letters include demands that tell town leaders to use eminent domain to seize property and give it back to “black, brown and red people.”
A second demand requires 90% of the town’s unused budgets be donated to democratic elections.
Another demand told city leaders to create laws giving oversight and authority to certain social justice and socialist groups.
The letters also said if the demands don’t happen, those towns will “face our wrath.”
The groups claiming to have written the letters also said they have the cell phone numbers and home addresses of city leaders, so that they choose wisely.
“That upset me,” said Perkins. “I mean, come on. These people have hurt nobody.”
Perkins does not think the letters are from a real organization and believes they are from someone just trying to stir up things.
In one case, though, a town clerk and mayor were getting ready to write a check to the group to keep the peace.
“She thought that these masses of people were going to come and destroy their town,” said Perkins. “That’s what she thought was going to happen because the letter says if they didn’t do what they say, you’re going to meet their wrath.”
Perkins said the postal inspector and the FBI are now involved, and FBI officials confirmed Friday morning they are aware of this case.
Even though the letters and envelopes state the specific social groups sending them, KSL has decided not to name those groups because we have not yet been able to make contact with those organizations and it would be unfair to name them if this is a prank.