A photo of a patron wearing a Nazi armband at the Onyx Club circulated on social media after Halloween. In a Facebook post published Tuesday, three days after the incident, the club disputed online claims that staff let the man stay or saw him make Nazi salutes, according to The Sacramento Bee.
A Reddit post criticizing staff for allegedly ignoring complaints drew more than 2,500 upvotes. The club said it does not tolerate discrimination or hate and said it could not legally identify the patron or share a photo showing his face, according to the Sacramento Bee. The club also disputed the allegations about staff ignoring complaints and seeing salutes, the Bee reported.
The club’s account of what happened
The club said a woman alerted the manager to the armband and objected to it. In its account, staff had not noticed the armband when the man arrived at about 11 p.m. wearing a jacket; he later removed it. The club said its security staff, door attendant and bartenders had not seen it when he entered, the Bee reported.
The club said the manager was preparing to remove the patron when he and another customer became involved in an altercation in which beers were thrown. Staff then escorted the man out and told him not to return; he initially objected but left. The club also said staff had not served him while he was wearing Nazi gear, according to the Bee.
What statewide data show
The California Department of Justice reported that anti-Jewish bias events statewide fell from 310 in 2024 to 289 in 2025, a decrease of 6.8%, according to its 2025 hate-crime report. That statewide statistic does not show how reported incidents changed specifically in Placer County or determine how the Onyx Club incident was classified.
What the statistics can show
The statewide California figures do not answer what FBI hate-crime records show for Placer County. The department cautioned that some agencies did not submit a full year of data for 2025, advising care when comparing those figures with prior years. It also distinguishes hate incidents—which may be constitutionally protected or may not violate criminal laws—from hate crimes; that distinction does not determine how this incident was classified. ADL documented 9,354 antisemitic incidents in 2024 in its own count, which includes criminal and non-criminal acts of hate against Jews, according to the organization. Because that count includes both kinds of acts, it has a different scope from California DOJ’s reported statewide figures.
Other reports involving Nazi imagery
A separate Halloween dispute was reported in Tennessee, where a woman posted on X about two men in SS-themed outfits at a Broadway bar. One wore a hat with a red swastika and the other appeared dressed as a German soldier; she also shared video of patrons posing for photos with and shaking hands with them, according to The Nerd Stash.
In a different incident in September 2017, a man wearing a red swastika armband on a Seattle bus became the subject of widely shared posts and was later filmed being punched on a downtown sidewalk. Seattle police said they arrived within five minutes, found him on the ground and saw him leave after removing the armband, GeekWire reported.
