Authorities in Windsor, Connecticut, are investigating after several ropes that appeared to be nooses were found hanging this week from the rafters of an Amazon warehouse facility still under construction.
A construction company supervisor at the site on Kennedy Road north of Hartford told police he found a “hangman’s noose” late Tuesday afternoon dangling from a steel beam on the second floor of the building.
Police were called to the scene and a team of workers removed the rope before an email was sent to all employees “informing them of the incident,” according to a news release from Windsor police Capt. Andrew Power.
The next day police were called back to the work site after a “report of a rope that was thrown around a beam,” Power said, however, this time officers determined the item was “not a noose.”
Police were called to the site a third time on Thursday morning when five more ropes “that could be interpreted as nooses” were found hung on different floors throughout the facility.
Police collected the ropes and took them back to the station for further investigation.
As of Friday, no one could say who had hung the ropes at the facility. No other evidence was found to indicate that someone may have been an intended target.
In addition to offering a $5,000 reward, the construction company held safety meetings and anti-discrimination training with its employees.
Amazon issued a statement about the unexplained incident.
“We’re deeply disturbed by this incident,” said Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel. “Hate, racism or discrimination have no place in our society and are certainly not tolerated in any Amazon workplace – whether it be under construction like this one, or fully operational. Amazon and RC Andersen are actively working with law enforcement as they investigate. Because this is an ongoing criminal investigation, we’re unable to comment further.”
The Anti-Defamation League classifies a hangman’s noose as a hate symbol that is primarily used to intimidate Black people.
During the eras of Reconstruction, Jim Crow and Civil Rights, nooses were frequently used for public hangings. Bands of white vigilantes usually led by the Ku Klux Klan were notorious for carrying out lynchings, bombings and assassinations on Black people with impunity, and with few — if any — legal consequences.
During the lynching era, it was not uncommon for the deaths of Black men to be ruled as suicides to cover up murders by white mobs and police officers, according to The Washington Post.
Memories of the atrocities are still an open wound for the Black community.
Dozens of noose sightings across the country last year heightened fears and suspicions as five people of color were found hanged in three U.S. cities amid festering racial tensions following the police killing of George Floyd on Memorial Day.
In one case at Talladega Superspeedway, a knotted rope was found hanging inside the garage of NASCAR’s only Black driver, Bubba Wallace. An FBI investigation later concluded that no crime had been committed as the noose had been used as a garage door pull in the stall as early as October 2019.
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