Dozens of nooses have shown up on U.S. construction sites. The culprits rarely face consequences.

Dozens of nooses have shown up on U.S. construction sites. The culprits rarely face consequences.

It happens like this: A noose is left at a construction site or office, somewhere it can easily be found. Usually, by a Black employee. Police are called, complaints filed and vows made to find the culprit.

Then, nothing.

The cycle played out repeatedly this spring at the site of a future Amazon warehouse in Connecticut, where the state’s governor decried the discovery of eight nooses in five weeks as “racist provocation of the worst type.” Yet it’s a form of harassment that occurs with unsettling frequency in the construction industry: More than four dozen nooses have been reported at 40 building sites and offices across the United States and Canada since 2015, a Washington Post analysis of news reports and court documents has found.