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Three Latino social service agencies were closed down Monday after their respective mail rooms received derogatory letters accompanied by a suspicious white powder. 

“This is an ongoing investigation, and we want to keep the content of the letters confidential,” said Assistant Fire Chief David Orth. “But it was derogatory, and it is being investigated as a hate crime.” 

The scare occurred at about 9:30 a.m. at three different locations, and a coordinated citywide team of personnel from the city manager’s office, the health department and police and fire departments responded to the situation. 

“They were all Latino community-affiliated organizations. One was located in the 300 block of Shattuck Avenue, the other in the 2500 block of San Pablo Avenue and the last one in the 1000 block of Carlton,” Orth said, refusing to disclose the organization’s name.  

Orth said preliminary testing indicated that the white residue left inside the envelopes is not anthrax, but it will not be known for sure what the substance is for 48 hours as it will take a full day to allow cultures to grow for further examination.  

The buildings were not evacuated. But all individuals who directly handled the mail were “properly decontaminated,” according to Orth, by being showered and having their clothes bagged up.  

Across the hall from Central Latino, the organization on San Pablo Avenue where the first letter was discovered, is the River of Words. And at least one person from that agency says she felt very uncomfortable with the handling of the situation.  

“It was handled very badly,” said Pamela Michael. “Without any information whatsoever, we were told that we could go back to work. And from what I understand it will be three days before the testing on the substance is conclusive, so why was it safe for us to go back to work within hours of this happening? Plus the mail room was accessible all day to people who did not know. And none of those people were tested.” 

Michael also stated that several employees were confused and concerned and were left with no one to call to answer their questions. After several attempts she said she finally got a hold of someone in the city of Berkeley’s Health Department who told her it was unlikely that the substance was indeed anthrax. Upon further investigation, Michael said she was informed that several Latino organizations in the area were being targeted. But none of that information was forthcoming earlier in the day.  

“No one knew who to call. It was a Hazmat team, that I knew,” Michael said. “ But I wasn’t even made aware who they were — we still don’t know whether it was federal or local. I don’t know how these things are usually handled but it was all very disturbing.” 

Orth said it was not necessary to evacuate the entire building due to the quantity of powder that was discovered as well as the physical configurations of the building. The mail room, he said, was well-divided from other areas of the building and there was such a small amount of powder discovered that any type of infection would have been very localized. 

According to Orth, it was more important that the public received information on how to recognize a possible illness at that point. 

“We didn’t think it was a good idea to evacuate the entire building and cause hysteria and now with the test coming back we know it would not have been a good idea,” Orth said. “At this point we are more concerned with the content of the letters.” 

The Berkeley Fire Department released mail-handling suggestions they hope will help the public identify and treat suspicious mail. 

Among a list of red flags is a lack of return address on letters. Due to the ongoing investigation, Orth would not say if the letters sent to the Latino agencies Monday were without a sender’s address 

He also stated that officials were investigating whether or not there is a correlation to this event and Monday being the six-month anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.  

“There investigating it but it’s too early to say if there’s a connection,” Orth said.  

He had no explanation as to why the Latino community was targeted but said that officials are now trying to get the message out to the Latino community that there is indeed a possible threat.  

“They are doing a notification throughout the Latino community to faith-based organizations and the releases we are putting out there are in Spanish. But there’s no phone tree to tap into the Latino community or anything,” he added.  

Orth said he believes this to be the only hate crime of this nature to occur in Berkeley in the last several years. 

Contact reporter Devona Walker at devona@berkeleydailyplanet.net