Employee: Effigy hung from Islip facility

Islip officials are investigating a Halloween prank in which a town employee hung a masked dummy from a roof beam at a Central Islip parks maintenance shop.

The effigy upset at least one African-American town employee, who reported it to police but declined to press charges.

A Suffolk police spokeswoman said the matter was under review Wednesday, but investigators "at this time don't believe criminality is involved."

"There was . . . a makeshift dummy swinging from a noose-like apparatus, hanging from a beam -- simulating a lynching is what it looked like to me," said town employee Cleveland Gamble, who is black and reported the incident.

About 10:30 p.m. Monday, employees returning from patrolling town parks found the dummy -- dressed in parks department uniform, work boots and a skeleton mask, witnesses and town officials said.

Gamble said he was offended and asked the shop steward to take it down. He gave police a statement Tuesday but declined to pursue a complaint when he learned a foreman, with whom Gamble has worked for 10 years, had put up the dummy for Halloween. He declined to name the man, who could not be reached for comment.

Gamble said the man came forward Tuesday and "apologized that it offended me and said there was no malice, that it was a prank and it was not intended for me to take offense . . . I took him at his word."

But Gamble said he had reported two racial incidents at work in 2007 and wanted the town to "document" this occurrence.

"I had a gallows drawn on my work truck when it was parked in the town yard, and I've had the N-word written in dust on my truck also," he said.

Islip labor relations director Rob Finnegan said the town has "zero tolerance [policy] on discrimination, harassment and intolerance of any kind."

He said he took a statement from the alleged perpetrator, and a formal complaint was expected Thursday from "the complainant [Gamble]," who has retained a lawyer. "Even if no offense is intended, this type of conduct is not acceptable," Finnegan said.

Town Republicans used the incident to attack Democratic Supervisor Phil Nolan. But Nolan's office countered that such accusations were political, "shameful and reckless."

Republican Councilwoman Trish Bergin Weichbrodt, whom Gamble first approached about Monday night's incident, called for an internal investigation and sensitivity training for those involved.

Gamble approved of the sensitivity training but said he hopes the foreman keeps his job. "It was a bad joke -- bad judgment."