No charges filed in NJ Election Day bias crime investigation

MIDDLE TOWNSHIP — No charges will be filed in an Election Day incident that was investigated as a possible bias crime against a Black congressional candidate, Cape May County Prosecutor Jeffrey Sutherland has announced.

Police have identified a 36-year-old resident from the Rio Grande section of town as the woman caught on surveillance footage, hanging dolls in rope nooses from a tree above a campaign sign for Tim Alexander.

According to Sutherland, family members said that the woman has been “suffering from behavioral health issues and that she was treated in the recent past for such health issues.”

While it was properly reported as a bias incident and forwarded to the state Division of Criminal Justice, he continued, police have since determined it was not a bias intimidation crime and no charges.

Alexander, a former law enforcement officer himself, was briefed on the circumstances of the investigation.

Sutherland said “he agrees with and accepts the decision not to charge this individual at this time.”

Alexander is a former detective captain with the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office and current civil rights attorney who ran against Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew in the 2nd District.

“This office has and will continue to thoroughly investigate any claims of Bias Intimidation based on race, color, religion, gender, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, nationality or ethnicity in accordance with the strict laws in New Jersey,” the prosecutor said.

Such incidents can be reported to the Cape May County Prosecutor’s Office at 609-465-1135.

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