APD removes 'noose' elite unit icon

ALBUQUERQUE (AP) - An elite unit of the Albuquerque Police Department assigned to the city's worst criminals will no longer use a hangman's noose as its symbol.

The Albuquerque Journal reports ( http://bit.ly/Mbkq0v ) that police Chief Ray Schultz said in an email late Thursday that he is doing away with the noose image. He ordered one of his deputy chiefs to remove it from all documents and apologized "to anyone who may have been offended" by it.

The department's use of the symbol came to light last week as an internal Albuquerque Police wanted poster emerged as part of a lawsuit in state District Court.

Cmdr. Doug West, who oversees the Repeat Offender Project, known as the ROP team, said early Thursday he was "not a knot expert" when asked about the noose image.

"The simple way I look at it is that it's a rope, and it's the ROP team. I don't read into the hangman's noose. I don't know a whole lot about knots," West said.

He added: "It's something that we need to look at and get rid of . because people would construe this as, like you, you're looking at it as a hangman's noose, and if that's how people are perceiving this, it's the wrong signal that we need to send. We need to not send that."

He said similar police units across the country use similar imagery to identify themselves.

Two local civil rights attorneys said using the noose as a symbol for the police unit goes far beyond creating an image problem for Albuquerque police. Instead, it promotes violence and serves as another signal that Albuquerque police are out of control, they said.

"It's culturally insensitive at best," attorney Shannon Kennedy said. "For them to say that it's just a rope shows willful ignorance. It speaks directly to the cultural problem within this police department and encourages a gang-like, us-vs.-them mentality instead of service to the public."

When asked about the image in a telephone interview with the Journal, West said he was not familiar with it, had never seen it on any document and didn't know whether it had anything to do with the ROP team.

West later said the noose has been the ROP team's "symbol" for 20 years and that the department planned to change it.

Officials said for two decades the noose image was frequently used on internal documents such as wanted posters and was even painted on the wall of the unit's office.

Schultz said it was brought to his attention by a city attorney last week, who suggested it might "be misinterpreted by some people in the community," and that he agreed with that assessment.

The ROP team often works undercover to track and arrest repeat offenders.

The Journal became aware of the symbol when an internal document advising officers to be on the lookout for a suspect appeared in a court filing. The undated document features the noose and the gang unit logo.