At around 9am today, one of Congressman Jimmy Panetta’s staffers at his Santa Cruz office, on the third floor of a modernist concrete box near the San Lorenzo River, opened a letter postmarked from Texas, sending a white baby powder-type substance billowing into the air, the elected official said.
The Santa Cruz County municipal building and the adjoining superior court were evacuated. EMTs evaluated the staffer and found no reason to send her to the hospital for treatment.
“Unfortunately in this day and age, with the violent rhetoric that’s out there and the toxicity of our politics over the last 10 years, these are the types of things that we have to deal with,” Panetta said in a press conference around 12:30pm, adding he was just one of several political targets across the country. “We’re getting reports that we’ll see develop throughout the day. It was just sort of a blanket sending of this type of thing.”
The FBI is reportedly investigating more than 100 similar mail items across the country.
Panetta said he wasn’t going to let the powder scare deter him from conducting the business of government.
“We’ve got a job to do and we’ll continue to serve the constituents in the 19th Congressional District,” he said. “I’m here to make the federal government work. This slows things down. But we’re gonna wait to get the green light from the HAZMAT team, and hopefully get back in there pending on the results of their analysis that they’re doing right now.”
Panetta said these sorts of incidents are becoming much too common in America today.
“Threats against members of Congress have risen over 1,000% over the last 10 years,” he said. “It shouldn’t be like this. Our politics can’t be based on the last 10 years of what we’ve gone through as a country.”
Santa Cruz County CEO Nicole Coburn said she was pleased with how her staff reacted to the incident.
“We did what we needed to do—followed our protocols to evacuate the building,” she said.
“Everyone’s safe, and that’s what’s most important. And now it’s up to our law enforcement partners to figure out what happened.”
Koburn said undeterred residents continued to drop off ballots at the voting box outside the County Building during the evacuation.
A Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office on the scene declined to comment on the status of the investigation. The agency’s spokesperson had no updates as of 1:30pm Friday.
