A reward has grown to $50,000 for information leading to the person responsible for placing nooses at a construction site for an Amazon fulfillment center late last month in Connecticut.
Authorities in Windsor are continuing to investigate after several sets of ropes that appeared to be nooses were found hanging from the rafters of the warehouse between April 27 and 29.
On Thursday, Amazon announced an additional $25,000 to double the $25,000 amount first put up by RC Anderson LLC, the developer of the site.
“Amazon remains deeply disturbed by the incident that occurred in Windsor a couple of weeks ago,” Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokeswoman, said in a written statement. “Hate, racism and discrimination have no place in our society and are not tolerated in any development associated with Amazon — whether it be under construction like this one, or fully operational.”
When the ropes were spotted, the construction company immediately held safety meetings and anti-discrimination training with its employees.
More than two weeks have now passed without any leads or suspects.
A supervisor at the construction site on Kennedy Road north of Hartford told police he found a “hangman’s noose” dangling from a steel beam on the second floor of the building on April 27.
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 the morning of April 29 when five more ropes “that could be interpreted as nooses” were found hung on different floors throughout the facility, officials said.
Police collected the ropes and took them back to the station for further investigation but have not since reported any new developments in the case.
For now, the incident remains a mystery as no one can definitively say who hung the ropes at the facility. No other evidence was found to indicate that someone in particular may have been targeted.
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.
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 from trees 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.
