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Months After Noose Crime, Investigation Continues Without Suspect
PUBLISHED JANUARY 25, 2008
The New York Police Department’s hate crimes task force continues to investigate the Oct. 9 hate crime at Teachers College but remains without suspects in the incident involving a noose found on an African-American professor’s door.
The incident was the first of a series of bias incidents on campus, including racist graffiti in a Lewisohn Hall bathroom and a swastika on the door of a professor’s office in TC’s department of counseling and clinical psychology, the same department where the noose was found. The victim of the noose incident, professor of psychology and education Madonna Constantine, said previously, “I would like the perpetrator to know that I will not be silenced.”
A test performed on the rope used to form the noose yielded no DNA that could be used to identify the perpetrator.
Furthermore, a review of the security videotapes subpoenaed by Teachers College produced “no valuable information,” confirmed Deputy Inspector Michael Osgood, who heads the investigation. The police subpoenaed the video tapes at TC’s request, as the school could not otherwise hand them over due to privacy concerns.
Osgood insisted that the hate crimes task force will continue to work on the case as long as information resources remain untapped. “We will maintain discipline through the investigative process, we will exhaust all investigative pathways, and whatever that yields ... that will yield some result,” he said.
Osgood declined to estimate the amount of time the investigation might continue.
Teachers College Director of External Affairs Joseph Levine expressed confidence in the police investigation on behalf of the Teachers College administration.
“They’re working on it, and we’re cooperating with them. We feel they’re being thorough,” he said.
The Teachers College administration and its Office for Community and Diversity plan to continue to address students’ concerns about the incident with numerous initiatives, including brown bag lunch discussions, a partnership with the Anti-Defamation League to educate faculty on managing conversations about race in the classroom, and the reevaluation of faculty hiring and the curriculum.
Teachers College Student Senate President Michelle Cammarata said that she believes, however, that students have turned their focus away from the investigation of the crime and toward the diversity and community issues highlighted by the incident.
“I think that people were much more interested in the investigation months back when this actually happened. Now, sure if something turned up and they found out who it was, I think people would be interested in it, but I’m not sure anybody is still on the edge of their seat waiting for something to come out of that,” Cammarata said.
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