Supremacist Messages Found in Notebooks : Racism: Slogans were stamped on stationery at two Valley K mart stores. Police are investigating incident as hate crime.

Burbank police are investigating as a hate crime an incident in which 180 notebooks stamped with a white supremacist message were found on the shelves of two Valley K mart stores.

“We don’t have much, but it’s been designated as a crime against a race, or religion or ethnicity,” said Lt. Art Moody of the Burbank Police Department.

The notebooks were stamped with the words, “Earth’s most endangered species: The white race. Help preserve it.” The message in black ink listed a telephone number for a group identified as the Aryan Freedom Fighters, which has a Chatsworth post office box.

Police said the incident is being classified as a hate crime because investigators who called a phone number printed on the notebooks were greeted with a message that was “race biased or promoted hatred of another race,” said Lt. Van Miller of the Burbank Police Department. The notebooks were removed late Saturday from the shelves of K mart stores on San Fernando Road in Burbank and Foothill Boulevard in Sunland.

“They’re gone. We don’t want to sell them,” said Gentry Long, assistant manager of the Burbank store.

Long said he did not know how many of the notebooks, which contained lined white paper with a glued binding, were sold or how many were returned.

Police said store managers learned of the vandalized Mead, Union Comp and Carolina Pad notebooks after a customer returned one to the Burbank location.

Long declined further comment, saying only, “I’ve been advised by the store manager not to talk anymore about it.”

Regional executives for the Michigan-based retail chain were not available for comment.

Police said store management believe the notebooks were probably stamped before arriving at the stores because the same type of vandalized notebooks were found in both locations. They believe the notebooks were probably delivered from a company warehouse within the past week.