Looks like a buncha lunatics from Jena sneaked into Columbia University.

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Columbia delays, but gives NYPD noose tapes

BY ALISON GENDAR, MELISSA GRACE and TRACY CONNOR
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Friday, October 12th 2007, 4:00 AM

Columbia University stonewalled NYPD investigators hunting the person who left a noose on a black professor's door - by refusing to turn over security tapes without a subpoena.

The Ivy League school eventually capitulated after being served with the legal document yesterday afternoon and surrendered the video, but the probe already had been delayed by a full day, angry police officials said.

"Time [that detectives] could have spent reviewing the tapes was spent getting a subpoena," Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne said.

Police hope the 56 hours of tape from seven cameras around Teachers College on W. 120th St. will lead them to the culprit who targeted Prof. Madonna Constantine with the racist symbol of black lynchings.

Cops first asked for the footage on Tuesday after colleagues of Constantine discovered the hand-tied rope hanging from the doorknob of her office and called security.

College officials told cops the techie who could retrieve the tape wouldn't be in until Wednesday, and police reluctantly agreed to wait until then, the NYPD said.

But when the head of the Hate Crime Task Force called Teachers College General Counsel Janice Robinson the next day, she told him he needed a court order and refused to budge when he argued.

Cops then spent hours preparing the paperwork and getting a subpoena signed by a judge.

Investigators had downloaded about half of the 56 hours of tape by last night, Browne said.

Teachers College spokeswoman Diane Dobry refused to answer questions about the delay, issuing a statement that said: "We are giving the tapes to the police."

The college also is turning over the names of students in Constantine's classes.

Police have no suspects in the incident, which garnered headlines around the globe and sparked a campus protest rally.

They interviewed some colleagues of Constantine, including Prof. Suniya Luthar, whom she named in a $100,000 defamation suit last spring.

"This is an unspeakable, horrible, ugly incident, and I hope they get to the bottom of it soon," Luthar said yesterday.

Police sources told the Daily News they don't see any connection between the noose and Constantine's dispute with Luthar.

On ABC's "Good Morning America," Constantine said she wept when she saw the noose. "Tears really sprang to my eyes," she said.

Meanwhile, a 5-inch swastika was found scrawled in a men's bathroom at Columbia University yesterday. There is no evidence the anti-Semitic symbol - which was accompanied by a drawing of a man wearing a yarmulke - is connected to the noose.

In another incident, workers at the post office at 90 Church St. near Ground Zero reported seeing a noose hanging from a nearby lamppost about 1 p.m. yesterday. They first called the building management company, which took the rope down, and then contacted cops, who are investigating.