Oct 12, 2007 2:02 pm US/Eastern
Noose Left Dangling By NYC Post Office
Disturbing Discovery Is Latest Hate Message In Our Area
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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A noose was left on the door of a Columbia University professor on Tuesday morning, and a noose was found hanging Thursday at the Church Street Post Office.
CBS
There was a disturbing discovery near Ground Zero in Manhattan Thursday. A noose was found hanging from a lamppost at the Church Street Post Office. This is just the latest message of hate striking the city.
Police said it wasn't clear where or at whom the Church Street noose might have been directed.
"At this point, there was no target that was evident or any motive," U.S. Postal Inspection Service spokesman Al Weissman said Friday morning. He said no postal workers had reported any threats or other problems.
Postal workers in a second floor office at Church Street noticed the noose Thursday afternoon
Building managers removed the noose, which was later turned over to the NYPD's hate crimes unit for investigation, police said.
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 the discovery 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.
A colleague, who Constantine is suing for defamation, says she had nothing to do placing this vile symbol of racism at her door.
"This whole thing is utterly, utterly despicable, ugly. As I've said to several people, nobody in the world should have to go through something like this," said Columbia Professor Suniya Luthar.
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.
According to Morris Dees, co-founder of Southern Poverty, "Maybe Jena, Louisiana, has caused a copycat situation. There is no real database on nooses around the country, but there's been an increase in the last 10 to 15 years all over the U.S. -- not just the south."
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.
The post office at 90 Church St. was closed for nearly three years after the 2001 terrorist attacks, which left the 15-story building contaminated with asbestos, mercury and debris from the fallen twin towers.
Stay with wcbstv.com and CBS 2 for the latest in this continuing story.
(© 2009 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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