BIGOTED NOTES SENT TO BLACKS : ENVELOPES DEFACED, SENT THROUGH UPS.Byline: Karen Schwartz Associated Press In a case taking on the outlines of racial harassment or corporate extortion, someone is sending prominent African-Americans United Parcel Service United Parcel Service, Inc. (NYSE: UPS), commonly referred to as UPS, is the world's largest package delivery company, delivering more than 15 million packages[1] a day to 6.1 million customers in over 200 countries and territories around the world. envelopes defaced de·face tr.v. de·faced, de·fac·ing, de·fac·es 1. To mar or spoil the appearance or surface of; disfigure. 2. To impair the usefulness, value, or influence of. 3. with bigoted big·ot·ed adj. Being or characteristic of a bigot: a bigoted person; an outrageously bigoted viewpoint. big messages. UPS executives say they didn't know the dozen next-day air envelopes had passed through their system in December and January until contacted this month by The Associated Press. The envelopes were sent to the Washington offices of two Chicago congressmen, Jesse Jackson Jr. and Bobby Rush; to the New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. home and office of New York State Comptroller The New York State Comptroller is the chief fiscal officer of the U.S. state of New York. The duties of the comptroller include auditing government operations and operating the state's retirement system. H. Carl McCall; and to former Assistant U.S. Attorney for Civil Rights Deval Patrick. Police say at least three other people received defaced UPS envelopes but would not release their names. After looking into the complaints, UPS insisted none of its 339,000 employees was involved and suggested it may be an extortion scam. The criminal investigation, meanwhile, involves at least four states and the District of Columbia District of Columbia, federal district (2000 pop. 572,059, a 5.7% decrease in population since the 1990 census), 69 sq mi (179 sq km), on the east bank of the Potomac River, coextensive with the city of Washington, D.C. (the capital of the United States). ; law enforcers working on it range from local police to the FBI bias crimes unit. ``This case has brought us in all sorts of different directions,'' said a spokesman for the New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of state police who asked not to be identified by name. UPS said its tracking system - so sophisticated that commercials boast it can tell whether a person who signs for a package dots his I's - missed the scrawled racial epithets. Envelopes travel with labels up, and the words were written on the undersides, said UPS spokesman Ken Sternad at the Atlanta headquarters. The flurry of mailings coincides with a nationwide class-action lawsuit against UPS by African-American managers who contend they are passed over in pay and promotions. In addition, African-American UPS employees in California have complained of harassment by supervisors. UPS says it tolerates no workplace discrimination and that the envelopes were sent by someone ``using race and our service as a cover for another potentially illegal activity,'' Sternad said. He said UPS had traced many, if not all, of the envelopes back ``to a single source'' in St. Paul, Minn. The culprit could be charged at a state level with aggravated harassment, or at the federal level with violating civil rights statutes. Depending on the motive, the sender might also face federal penalties for tampering with interstate commerce interstate commerce In the U.S., any commercial transaction or traffic that crosses state boundaries or that involves more than one state. Government regulation of interstate commerce is founded on the commerce clause of the Constitution (Article I, section 8), which . CAPTION(S): Photo Photo: Angela Jackson displays copies of artwork that had been defaced before arriving at her St. Paul, Minn., home via United Parcel Service. Associated Press |
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