CHARLOTTE -- As protestors confronted police in the hours following the Keith Scott shooting in September, their voices were heard by some who saw the fire as fuel.
A message claiming to be from the Loyal White Knights of the KKK told the group’s members, in part, “Go down to Charlotte downtown and help whites against black animals. No robes or uniforms just street clothes if it gets nasty you know what to do [sic].”
Time Warner Cable News obtained the message from an email sent to us in a Freedom of Information Act request.
The email was on Sept. 25 sent by council member John Autry to Interim City Manager Ron Kimble. Police Chief Kerr Putney and council member Al Austin were copied.
“Compelled to share this. Something that fell into Al and mine's hands,” Autry wrote.
"Obviously there's a whole lot of information that was going out on social media at that point, and much of it was us trying to decipher what was real what was going to happen,” Austin told Time Warner Cable News Tuesday.
We reached out to CMPD to ask if the KKK had a presence at the riots and if they were a potential threat, but CMPD declined to comment because they say they did not want to give the group any more attention than it already has.
Austin says he never learned if members of the hate group attended any protests, but their words were alarming enough.
"Just someone creating that and sending that out to the general public was disheartening,” he said. “People who don't understand we're all one people, we're all one people under God."