Cameras Coming To Morningside Park, Over A Year After Murder

HARLEM, NY — Nearly two years after an 18-year-old student was killed in Morningside Park during a robbery, police-monitored security cameras will be installed in the park thanks to funding included in the new city budget.

The 2022 budget, passed by the City Council in June, includes $200,000 that will go toward four new cameras in the hilly, 30-acre park, which forms the border between Harlem and Morningside Heights.

The Argus brand cameras will be capable of streaming directly to the NYPD's 26th Precinct, City Councilmember Mark Levine told Patch. That is an upgrade from the handful of cameras already in the park, which cannot be watched in real-time.

It wasn't clear when the cameras would be installed. But the allocation fulfills a promise that Levine first made at a January 2020 community meeting, where neighbors tried to make sense of Tessa Majors' stabbing death weeks earlier.

Majors, a first-year at Barnard College, had been crossing the park after dark on Dec. 11, 2019 when three teenagers attempted to rob her. One of them stabbed Majors with a knife after she resisted, authorities have said. She died at a nearby hospital.

"What became clear in the investigation of the Tessa Majors murder was that there were parts of the parks where there was not adequate camera coverage," Levine said. "It was a real impediment, particularly in the early days of the investigation."

Morningside Park has long held symbolic meaning as the dividing line between a predominantly Black neighborhood and a whiter, more affluent area. Last year, residents feared that the death of Majors, a young white woman, at the hands of three Black boys from Harlem would inflame racial tensions and contribute to over-policing.

Some of the measures taken by police did prompt a backlash, like the gas-powered NYPD floodlights that illuminated the park at night for weeks after the murder.

"People thought it looked like some kind of a police state," said Brad Taylor, president of Friends of Morningside Park. "For the longest time, there were squad cars there from the precinct with their lights flashing all the time."

Levine, too, said there had been intense pushback to the possibility of increasing police patrols in the park. But adding cameras was a more unifying option, receiving "overwhelming support" from neighbors, he said.

Efforts to foster conversation between residents on both sides of the park had just begun when the pandemic hit, interrupting talks just as they had "started to gain momentum," Levine said.

One of the three teens charged in Majors's killing, a 14-year-old boy, was sentenced last year to 18 months of juvenile detention. Two others are being charged as adults with second-degree murder and robbery.

"Things have improved"

Majors's death had been preceded by a rise in robberies in the park, authorities said. Over the past year, however, "things have improved," according to Taylor.

After recording 24 reports of serious crimes in 2019, Morningside Park had just seven in 2020 and zero so far this year, according to NYPD statistics. (Last year's reported crimes included one rape, one felony assault, one burglary, two robberies and two grand larcenies.)

Lighting, too, has gotten better upkeep by the city: shortly before the murder, Taylor counted 23 lamps that were out within the park. During a recent walk-through, he saw just one, he said.

In the coming months, Taylor hopes to hold another walk-through with the 26th Precinct and members of Levine's office, allowing residents to point out "blind spots" in the park where cameras could be installed.

These days, the park is getting "very heavy usage from really diverse members of the community," Levine said, calling it an encouraging trend.

"I hope we continue to pursue the kind of dialogue we need to make sure everyone feels safe."