This article was originally published in The Denver Post on December 6, 2007.
A correction ran on this article. Due to a reporting error, it incorrectly stated that an Arapahoe County employee found two nooses holding dead squirrels. Only one of the nooses held a squirrel carcass.
LITTLETON — By the time a report of nooses left for a black county employee got any attention, the hard evidence was long gone.
But Arapahoe County investigators now must determine whether the nooses represent a hate crime or a tasteless prank by a co-worker.
The employee, David Frazier, ignored the first dead squirrel with a noose around its neck he spotted in a work truck in late September.
But when he found the second lynched carcass a month later, he called the work-shed supervisor, who removed the noose and the animal, Frazier said.
Frazier said someone also hid razor blades in his tool belt, but he was lucky and didn’t cut himself.
County spokeswoman Andrea Rasizer said that by the time Frazier reported the incident, there were no squirrels, no nylon nooses, no razor blades or any other hard evidence. The county human resources department interviewed all 28 employees in the department and turned up no motive or suspects.
“It was for intimidation and harassment,” Frazier said in the lobby of the Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday, after giving a two-hour statement to investigators, including the names of those he believes are behind the nooses. “It wasn’t a joke.”
He said that when he started in the department last year, a co-worker said he would put Frazier “on the back of the bus,” a reference to abolished Jim Crow segregation laws.
Of 28 weatherization employees, only two are black, though other ethnic minorities also are on the crew, Frazier said. The other black employee, Jay Claiborne, has complained of similar incidents and is also part of the investigation.
The county commission asked Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson to take the case Tuesday.
Robinson said Wednesday that he had assigned three investigators to the matter.
Colorado’s hate-crime law, passed in 1988, adds a felony charge to any assault or threat based on race, faith, ancestry, age, sexual orientation, religion or place of birth.
John Marshall Sr., president of the Aurora branch of the NAACP, said the case is unquestionably a hate crime.
“It was an effort at discrimination and hate,” he said. “Black people have been dealing with this symbol their whole lives.”
Commissioner Frank Weddig said the county commission wanted the Sheriff’s Office to provide “a deeper look” at the case.
“There are no room for this kind of behavior in the workplace,” he said, “and especially involving such a racially charged symbol.”
Frazier, a 41-year-old native of Georgia, said he would wait for the outcome of the criminal investigation before he considers a civil case against the person he thinks is responsible.
“I’m going to think about this for the rest of my life,” he said of the nooses. “I want him to have to think about it too.”
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com
A correction ran on this article. Due to a reporting error, it incorrectly stated that an Arapahoe County employee found two nooses holding dead squirrels. Only one of the nooses held a squirrel carcass.
