By Chris Clyne
Last week’s discovery of a hangman’s noose in the basement locker room of the Hempstead Village Police Department led to yet another dose of sensitivity training for town officials.
The noose found by a janitor on Sept. 28 was apparently directed at 57-year-old Chief Willie Dixon, a supervisor who is black and earned a promotion as chief of parole last May. The “Old South” symbol of lynching has led the mayor of Hempstead, Wayne Hall, to join forces with the U.S. Justice Department in attempts to increase sensitivity training for members of the village police department and Nassau County officers.
As of last week, more nooses have been found in a Rockaway Beach parks department locker room, a Valley Stream mall parking lot and a Hempstead Town Public Works garage.
“This is a disgrace that people would find these symbols of hate amusing,” junior Matthew Rimi said. “I would hope that public outrage can lead to a solution and these people will be found.”
According to Hall, the training will focus on four main areas: overall sensitivity, profiling of suspects, cultural diversity and sexual harassment.
This is the second time Nassau County Police officials have been involved in sensitivity training of this kind. Similar training was required after officers beat a nude, mentally disabled man to death as he walked the streets of Hempstead 10 years ago. The training has ultimately been discontinued.
The string of noose discoveries comes weeks after the “Jena 6” were sent back to jail for allegedly beating a white classmate who hung a noose from a “traditionally white” tree that the black students asked permission to sit under outside a Jena high school in Louisiana.
The racially charged hate incident in Hempstead is not the only symbol for lynching that has been discovered in New York over the past few weeks.
Tuesday, Oct. 23 at Columbia University, a professor found a noose hanging in front of her door. On Oct. 11, a lynching rope was spotted outside a post office near Ground Zero.
Dixon cannot offer many reasons as to why a noose would be hanging from a steam pipe in a predominately black working environment. The only possible reason he can find is a measure recently taken to reshuffle the squads, which resulted in all officers receiving their usual shifts.
University students appear confused and startled as to something so seemingly ignorant taking place in modern, educated society. “I grew up in a racially charged town in the South,” Tim Baysinger, a University junior, said. “I never expected anything like this to happen [here]. In times like these I think it’s important for Americans to stand together and quit alienating one another.”
Mike Lawson suggested that all University students should be “livid over acts of hate in our own backyard.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigations has been called in to help Nassau County Police officers investigate the perpetrators of the hate-filled actions.
A Columbia University professor found a noose hanging on the doorhandle of her office on Oct. 23. (abcnews.com)