Police probe noose incident in Bridgeport
By Aaron Leo
Staff writer Updated: 01/23/2009 03:01:46 PM EST
Police probe noose incident in Bridgeport - Topix
BRIDGEPORT -- A hangman's noose was found wedged in the door of the watch desk at Fire Department headquarters on Congress Street, officials said.
The incident was immediately reported to police as a possible hate crime after the noose was discovered Jan. 15, said Fire Department spokesman Capt. Luis Rivera. Police and fire officials are investigating.
Acting Deputy Fire Chief James Grace, the department's executive officer, said Wednesday, however, "As it looks right now, there's no malice or intent." He did not elaborate.
The state's hate crime law was amended last year to prohibit placing nooses or simulations on public or private property "with intent to intimidate or harass any other person on account of religion, national origin, alienage, color, race, sex [or] sexual orientation."
"We are very sensitive to that," Fire Chief Brian Rooney said Wednesday.
No police report has been available on the incident, which came to light only after figures in minority firefighter groups made it public.
Ron Mackey, a retired city firefighter and past president of the Firebird Society, a group of black firefighters, called for more action from the chief regarding the noose.
"To me it was a statement. The chief should be outraged," he said, adding that Jan. 15 is the birth date of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
He also called for Rooney to issue a statement saying that placing nooses wouldn't be tolerated.
Donald Day, another retired firefighter and past president of the Northeast Region of the International Association of Black Professional Fire Fighters, also was angered.
"I am embarrassed that someone in the department that I served for over 20 years felt compelled to display this type of insensitive behavior. Some may feel this simply falls under the heading of practical joke. It doesn't," he said.
"The image of the noose in America is not something that is comical in any sense. It recalls to a time when African-Americans lived in very real fear of their lives if they crossed the wrong person," Day said. "In the context of a noose appearing at the workplace, especially a public safety work site, there is no excuse."
In November 2007, police Sgt. Joe Anne Simmons-Meekins found a noose under her patrol car when she came to work at the Police Department's Community Services Division on Sylvan
Avenue. Simmons-Meekins is black.
Although a $5,000 reward was offered for information leading to an arrest in the incident, the case remains unsolved.