Elaine Gross of Erase Racism stops by to talk with us:Suffolk police are investigating a possible hate crime after a trustee running for reelection in Brookhaven’s South Country school district said someone defaced one of his campaign flyers with a racist slur and stuck it in his mailbox.

Board member Cameron Trent said in an interview that a relative found the flyer Sunday before his family gathered for Mother’s Day brunch. He filed a police report Tuesday.

Suffolk police did not release the report Friday. In an email, a department spokesman said the incident "is currently classified as a hate incident and it is being investigated by the Hate Crimes Unit. As of now we have not developed the information necessary to classify it as a hate crime, but we are continuing to investigate and we are seeking any information from the public to assist in our investigation."

A picture of the flyer posted on Trent’s campaign Facebook page shows that someone had obscured his face with marker and written below that Black people should not run for office, using the racist slur.

The incident came days before Long Island’s Tuesday school board elections. In South Country, Trent and two other candidates are vying for two board seats.

Trent, 23, of Bellport, said he was the youngest board member in South Country history. A 2015 Bellport High School graduate now attending college and working in an assisted living facility, he started running for the board in 2016. He lost twice before winning a 2019 bid to serve the last two years of a departing trustee’s term.

This year’s campaign felt different from those before, he said, with "multiple instances where someone had a racial comment thrown at me." The comments were made on Facebook, never in person, he said. He said he was trying to focus on campaigning but was still reckoning with what had happened. "It makes you feel like you’re not valued, like you’re worthless," he said.