#Westchester County probes racist T-shirts left at black homes

Police in Westchester County are trying to figure out who left racist T-shirts outside the homes of black families in a local village, according to reports.

The seemingly friendly “Welcome to Dobbs Ferry” shirts carry a more sinister message on the back, with an inflammatory rant titled, “PLEASE RESPECT IT!” lohud.com said in a report.

“You came from there because you didn’t like it there. And now you want to change here to be like there,” the shirt reads. “We are not racist, phobic, or anti whatever-you-are. We simply like here the way it is and many of us were actually born here and stayed because it is not like there.”

“You are welcome here with open arms! But please stop trying to make here like there. If you want here to be like there, you should not have left there to come here.”

At least three black families in the suburban village of nearly 11,000 people had the shirts left outside their homes.

“If you are not racist or phobic, you would not call people ‘whatever you are,’ ” local activist Kelli Scott told NBC News. “These shirts were in driveways and doorsteps. Families woke up to this. They’re pretty shaken and kind of in a state of disbelief.”

The disturbing screed is not original nor unique to Dobbs Ferry, according to NBC. The quote has made the rounds on social media since at least 2019, and was at the center of a controversy in Connecticut last month.

Officials in the town of Stonington condemned a member of the town’s Board of Police Commissioners after he posted the quote on his Facebook page, forcing government officials to apologize on their own social media pages, the Westerly Sun reported at the time.

Commissioner Robert O’Shaughnessy later apologized for the post.

Dobbs Ferry police did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the investigation in the Westchester village.