Sanitation worker: Nooses were for Halloween

MUNCIE – A sanitation worker who said he attached nooses to his trash truck as a Halloween decoration has been suspended for 30 days without pay after co-workers complained.\nThe worker, whom officials declined to identify, placed two nooses on a rearview mirror inside his truck, said Bill Smith, interim administrator of the Muncie Sanitary District.\nFellow workers who handle the city’s trash collection noticed the nooses Tuesday afternoon. Smith said about 60 percent of the district’s 30 workers are black.\n“We’re pretty well convinced this was not racially motivated,” he said. “Having said that, it was very insensitive.”\nNooses, a racially charged symbol of the lynching violence of the segregation era, have turned up recently in a high school courtyard in Jena, La., on the office door of a black professor at Columbia University, in a tree at the University of Maryland and in a Coast Guard cadet’s bag.\nWith that in mind, driver Fred Lewis, who is black, said he and many others assumed someone was sending a hate message.\n“That’s your normal reaction,” Lewis said.\nThe tension lingered until Wednesday morning, when supervisors called a meeting with the district’s entire work force. At that meeting, the worker, who is white, said he tied the nooses from rope he found inside the cab because he’s fond of Halloween decorations.