Officer Briefs on Hate Crimes

Rows of empty seats greeted New York Police Officer Michael Osgood as he discussed how police respond to hate crimes Monday evening.

Despite many Columbia students’ demonstrated outrage towards the recent series of campus hate crimes, the only people in attendance were four students from Columbia College Student Council and Engineering Student Council who helped organize the event along with Columbia’s Department of Public Safety, and a lone University Senate member.

Officer Osgood lectured the five students and an untouched plate of cookies about how “everyone has the right to walk down the street and be safe in their identity.”
“I’m a little disappointed that more students couldn’t be here tonight to hear one of New York City’s leading experts on a timely issue at this campus,” said Associate Vice President for Public Safety James F. McShane.

Osgood’s presentation came just a few days after a bill allowing the Justice Department to assist local governments in the investigation and prosecution of hate crimes passed the U.S. Senate. The act, sponsored in part by Senator Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is a response to hate crimes at Columbia and in New York. It is currently being considered in a joint House-Senate committee.

A spokesperson for Senator Schumer said Schumer was “optimistic” about the passing of his legislation, the Matthew Shepard Act, which would increase technical, forensic, and prosecutorial support from federal to local officials in dealing with hate crimes, including up to $100,000 in grants.

“Hate crimes shake our communities to the core,” Schumer said in a press release. “This rash of hate crimes and intimidation flies in the face of the best inclusive and diverse traditions of New York and America and needs to be stopped immediately.”

“It [Schumer’s legislation] would be a deterrent if people saw they [perpetrators] were actually being prosecuted and there were arrests occurring,” said Columbia Law School professor Jack Greenberg.

The NYPD has six open noose cases in the city, after five years without a single incident.

“Right now, I think we’re seeing a clustering,” Osgood said, calling it “copycat-type behavior.”

A key point of Osgood’s presentation was explaining what distinguishes hate crimes from other crimes: the victim’s identity is the main motivation.

“When you have a hate crime, you don’t have just one victim—the whole group is victimized,” Osgood added.

He also mentioned that about 50 percent of hate crime offenders are between the ages of 15 and 20.

ESC President Elizabeth Strauss, SEAS ’08, said the meager turnout at the event was “unfortunate, but it was something we put together quickly.”

Strauss said she would pass on what she learned to fellow students, but that “it would have been beneficial for them to have heard it for themselves, instead of hearing it from us.”

When asked about hate crimes in the college campus environment, Osgood explained, “Right now we have a spike,” but typically, he said, students behave better: “If you didn’t have control of your emotions, you wouldn’t be here. You’d be pumping gasoline.”

Sara Vogel contributed reporting to this article.
Betsy Morais can be reached at news@columbiaspectator.com.