Outrage After 8th Noose Found at Amazon Site

After a seventh noose was found at a warehouse construction site in Connecticut last week, Amazon closed the Windsor site for the weekend to install extra security measures as police and the FBI investigated the incident as a possible hate crime. Community leaders expressed outrage after an eighth noose was found Wednesday, causing the site to shut down for the rest of the day, CNN reports. "There's no way this should be happening in Connecticut in 2021. There's no way," said Scot X. Esdaile, president of the Connecticut NAACP. Windsor Mayor Donald Trinks added: "We are frustrated beyond words."

Windsor Police Chief Donald Melanson said the new security measures included cameras at access points and stairwells, though he said the vast size of the site made complete coverage impossible. "This was clearly a noose," Melanson said, per NBC Connecticut. He said it was found entangled with electrical cables in an area that hadn't been worked on in about two weeks. Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont described events at the site as "disgusting and hateful" and urged law enforcement "to be aggressive in their investigation." He described the nooses as "racist provocation of the worst type" and said he had spoken to Amazon about the issue. (More Amazon.com stories.)