'Zoom Bombing' Case, With 'Heinous' Death Threat, Closed: Police

SOUTHOLD, NY — Southold Town Police have closed an investigation into two separate"Zoom bombing" incidents, Chief Martin Flatley said Tuesday.

The incidents, he said, took place at a Southold Town Anti-Bias Task Force meeting on December 20, 2021 and a regularly scheduled Southold town board meeting on January 4.

Both meetings were conducted on Zoom and both were open to the public; in both incidents, anonymous individuals were able to to use the "chat" feature to post racist and offensive comments, Flatley said.

Southold detectives opened an investigation into both of the incidents, and during the course of their work, consulted with the Southold Town information technologies department, the Suffolk County Police Department's computer crimes and hate crimes units, and the Suffolk County District Attorney's hate Crimes task fore, Flatley said.

Trying to identify whoever entered the meetings and posted comments, several subpoenas and a court order of the Stored Communications Act were served —but no active leads were identified, Flatley said.

Since the two incidents took place, the Southold Town information technologies department has taken corrective actions to prevent a recurrence, Flatley said.

An inauguration day deemed historic in Southold Town was marred as a member of the public sent the hate-filled comments and a racist death threat during the town board meeting that was held on Zoom.

According to Sonia Spar, co-chair of the Southold Town Anti-Bias Task Force, a similar incident occurred during the group's December meeting. The ABTF sent two letters to the town board and to the Southold Police Department asking for an investigation, which was then launched.

The first letter sent by the ABTF by Spar, ABTF co-chair Val Shelby and secretary Christopher North, detailed the account of the "Zoom bombing" that took place on December 20.

"The teleconferencing session was hijacked by the repeated insertion of language that was extremely racist and obscene," the letter said.

That incident, she said, was a coordinated attack by three different individuals and Zoom users who were already present in the virtual room by the time the session started.

"As ABTF members were signing in, one of these three people requested to speak. Since the meeting is open to the public, his microphone was enabled and the person began yelling extreme racial slurs. His microphone was disabled immediately," the letter said.

Next, the letter said, the three individuals inserting obscene messages in the Q & A and the chat space.

"This all continued until about four to five minutes later, when we were forced to close the meeting," they wrote.

The ABTF asked that the town's IT department track the users, so that they might be held accountable and potentially charged with harassment.

Two other members of the ABTF, Laura Held and Emily Geiger, also wrote a letter to the town board and police chief about the Jan. 4 town board meeting, saying the anonymous person inserted language that was "hateful, racist, obscene and also included a death threat."

They asked that the incident be investigated as a hate crime.

Of the death threat, Spar said: "It is heinous. A death threat is a crime and the clear racist component makes it a hate crime and it should be investigated as such. Supervisor Scott Russell denounced it and we as a community should come together to denounce it and all forms of hatred and bigotry."

Spar said the behavior should be decried particularly on the internet, "which has become a platform for those who feel emboldened to spew their racism and hate. We are stronger together and we need to speak out against it."

At the time, Russell said the town was investigating how the incident transpired.

Russell said Zoom is intended to provide people with another option to communicate with the town board and for the board to interact with the public.

"You try to expand that communication and, sometimes, nameless, faceless cowards exploit that to spew their racist filth. Courage created by nothing more than a keyboard and a false name to hide behind. We will identify the problem and take any action necessary to prevent it from happening again," Russell said.

Spar said the work to stamp out hatred and racism will continue: "As individuals we need to make that choice. Not to remain silent. But to take action and when we do it, as a community we will support each other and work toward a mutual goal. While MLK said, 'It starts with me,' I am not alone in the fight for respect, dignity and decency."