AURORA — Two city water department employees are on paid leave pending an investigation of a noose found by a black employee at an Aurora Water shed in Douglas County last month.
A third unidentified Aurora employee also was placed on leave but returned after being cleared of direct involvement, said Kin Shuman, the city’s human resources director. The human resources staff and the Doug las County Sheriff’s Office are conducting the investigation.
Another investigation involving the racially charged symbol is underway in Arapahoe County. The incidents, while similar, are not believed to be related.
“As soon as we became aware of this, we took it extremely seriously,” Shuman said.
He said the leave is not punishment, “because we’re still in the throes of the investigation,” which Shuman expected to take another week.
Tuesday, the Arapahoe County commission asked Sheriff Grayson Robinson to take over the investigation of noose incidents involving the county’s weatherization crew.
A black employee, David Frazier, reported seeing a noose in an unassigned work truck in September. A month later he found another noose in a department work shed, this one holding a dead squirrel.
Arapahoe County’s human resources department had interviewed all 28 members of the weatherization department and turned up no motives or suspects.
Frazier was dismayed by a similar event in Aurora, given the symbolism of a noose to African-Americans.
“It says lynching — that’s all it says,” Frazier said of the noose. “It says ‘lynch black people.’ ”
John Marshall Sr., president of the Aurora branch of the NAACP, said the use of the symbol is common and often goes unreported by targets of intimidation.
“The noose has been around as long as there’s been discrimination and intimidation,” he said.
Reports of such incidents are up sharply nationwide since nooses incited violence in Jena, La., according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which charts racial violence and hate groups.
After a decade of less than a dozen incidents a year involving nooses, more than 50 have been reported across the county to the center since a Sept. 20 rally to protest the prosecution of six black teenagers, known as the Jena 6, who lashed out against a classmate because of the symbol.
“I think it’s very clearly a reflection that there’s a white backlash to the way the incidents in Jena were portrayed,” said Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project.
Potok said leaders in Arapahoe County and Aurora were wise to act swiftly on the reports.
“The fact is, employers can get sued for this kind of behavior in the workplace, and they will lose,” he said. “You cannot allow a hostile workplace.”
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com
