Nov 30, 2007 3:27 pm US/Eastern
Cops: Still No Suspects In Columbia Noose Incident
NEW YORK (AP) ―
Nearly two months after someone hung a noose on the office door of a black Columbia University professor, police say they have no suspects in the apparent hate crime that shook the Ivy League campus.
Police had held out hope that an exhaustive review of tens of hours of images from security cameras would help break the case.
But the analysis yielded "no relevant information," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told reporters Friday following a promotion ceremony.
Extensive interviews of faculty members and students since the noose was found at Columbia's Teachers College also have failed to produce any promising leads, officials said. Nor, they added, has DNA testing on the 4-foot length of rope.
A separate case at the same graduate school of education -- involving a Jewish professor and a swastika -- remains unsolved.
Police officials said both incidents were part of a recent surge in reports of hate crimes across the city.
In recent weeks, administrators at Teachers College have organized campus forums on race to try to soothe "bruised feelings" while awaiting for news of an arrest, said college spokesman Joe Levine.
"You don't like to think that person's out there, but I think the police are doing everything they can," Levine said.
A telephone message left Friday with the noose victim, professor Madonna Constantine, was not immediately returned.
The discovery of the noose on the morning of Oct. 9 sparked outrage among students, faculty and administrators. Constantine, 44, a professor of education and psychology who has written extensively about race, denounced the attack the next day at a raucous rally.
"I'm upset that our community has been exposed to such an unbelievably vile incident," she said. "Hanging the noose on my door reeks of cowardice and fear on many, many levels."
Nooses are racially charged symbols of lynchings in the Old South and have appeared in a number of recent incidents around the country.
On Oct. 31, professor Elizabeth Midlarsky found a swastika painted on her door at Teachers College. Police on Friday said there still are no suspects in that case as well.
Kelly told a gathering in Brooklyn on Thursday that the NYPD has seen a 30 percent spike in reports of hate crimes in the past three months. They included 16 reports of nooses since the Teachers College incident, plus a spate of spray-painted swastikas on synagogues and homes in Jewish neighborhoods.
"We know these incidents have a tendency to build on each other," he said.
Teachers College, founded in 1887, describes itself as the nation's oldest and largest graduate school of education.
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