Nooses Found Hanging From Forklift On Long Island September 2007

Nooses Found Hanging From Forklift On Long Island
One Hanging Around Neck Of Stuffed Doll With Tar Spread Across Face

NEW YORK (CBS) ―
Hempstead Town Supervisor Kate Murray and Councilwoman Dorothy Goosby said that two nooses were left dangling from a forklift at the town's highway yard in Roosevelt, Long Island. One of the nooses was hanging around the neck of a stuffed cartoon doll that had tar spread across its face.

Murray says the nooses were found around lunchtime by a yard worker. This isn't the first time a noose was found in the town of Hempstead recently. Less than a month ago a noose was discovered inside the men's locker room at the Hempstead police department. It's just the latest in a string of racial incidents that have jarred New York City in recent weeks. Last week, there was a disturbing discovery near Ground Zero in Manhattan, where a noose was found hanging from a lamppost at the Church Street Post Office.

Postal workers in a second floor office at Church Street noticed the noose Thursday afternoon. Building managers removed the noose and turned it over to the NYPD's hate crimes unit for investigation. Speaking to reporters following a ceremony at a police memorial, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly suggested that the noose outside the post office could have been an attempt to imitate a discovery of a noose at Columbia, which shocked the Ivy League campus and received extensive news coverage.

"We have to be concerned about a copycat being out there," he said, adding that police had no suspects or motives in either incident. Meanwhile, detectives at the NYPD Hate Crime task force have 56 hours of surveillance tapes to comb through, trying to catch the person who hung a noose on Professor Madonna Constantine's door at Columbia University. Nooses -- deplored as symbols of lynchings in the Old South -- have appeared in recent incidents in the New York area and across the country. In Queens, a white woman was arrested after threatening to kill her black neighbor's children with a noose.

Other nooses have been found at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, and in the Hempstead Police Department's locker room on Long Island. Hate crimes in New York City were up 10 percent last year, with 256 incidents reported. Most recently, a Swastika was discovered in a bathroom stall at Columbia University. Stay with wcbstv.com and CBS 2 HD News for the latest in this developing story.

(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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