A noose was found in Patterson Park near the pagoda on Sunday morning, Baltimore police said.
Officers were called to the 2300 block of E. Baltimore St. at 11:21 a.m., police spokeswoman Chakia Fennoy said.
Frantz Edouard, 31, told The Sun he and his partner were walking through the park after breakfast when he saw it hanging on a tree near a pavilion.
“I walked past the pavilion. I stopped and stared out. I was like ‘Is that a freaking noose, what is that?’”
He said he posted a picture of it on a Patterson Park neighborhood webpage asking what it was. Edouard, who is black, said he’d never seen a noose before or anything like that like that in his seven years of living around Patterson Park.
Since then, he said there’s been a lot of speculation as to whether it was a foot swing or something other than a noose.
Whatever it is, Edouard said he was concerned about why it was left there and how it could impact children.
“I’m a big boy,” he said. “There needs to be more to scare me, but I worry about the kids walking in park.”
Edouard said he called Baltimore police, who were “very responsive.” He said they sent three cars and took pictures.
City Councilman Zeke Cohen said in a tweet Monday that recent hate incidents “cannot go unanswered.”
“We must shine a bright light on bigotry, especially when it festers in our own backyard,” Cohen wrote.
He also referenced two incidents in which Ku Klux Klan fliers were distributed in South Baltimore.
The Baltimore Police Department reported five hate or bias incidents in 2017, according to an analysis of police records by The Baltimore Sun. Howard County Police, which serve a population about half the size of Baltimore, reported 43 incidents.
Some watchdog groups have alleged Baltimore City, among other jurisdictions, underreport incidents of hate.
Eighty percent of the state’s 161 law enforcement agencies reported no hate incidents in 2016 and 2017. Kent and Caroline counties haven’t reported any hate or bias incidents over the last six years.
Nationally, Justice Department officials say hate crimes are underreported.
No other information about the noose hanging was immediately available from police.
