Noose Discovered At Santa Ana Offices Of Equality California; Attending Police Officer Suggests “Sometimes You Just Have To Live With Being A Victim”

A noose was discovered hanging from a doorknob at the offices of Equality California Thursday night when 25 year old Mel Distel, a volunteer returned to her office to find the obvious threat, but as the Orange County Register reports, she was ultimately more upset by the cavalier attitude of the attending officers that she and another Equality California staff member Daniel Shad shared. “There was nothing they could do, of course, there was no suspect and no crime had been committed. The officer said ‘what it is, is a string on a door.’ My vision got blurry, I was embarrassed and felt stupid for making the call. I took a deep breath and said ‘Do you see any correlation between the fact that this is a gay office and there was a noose left on our door in the wake of all these teen suicide?’ The officer said, ‘Sometimes you just have to live with being a victim,’ and proceeded to mention that his car had been broken into before,’” wrote Distel of the incident on her Facebook page. Friday, Distel said the noose “was shocking. It struck me as something that could escalate, something that was definitely meant to be hurtful.” She added that she “absolutely” intends to file a formal complaint about the police response. The offices of Equality California – unmarked save for a rainbow flag – were being used Thursday night on behalf of Assembly candidate Melissa Fox, who issued a statement that read in part that the hanging of the noose was a “despicable and hateful act, clearly intended to threaten and intimidate Equality California and other supporters of marriage equality from exercising our Constitutional rights to free speech and free association.” The police department has yet to comment.