David Terestre, ALM '98, Tufts University Policeman

Keeping the Peace While Pursuing the Thesis

On a Saturday in February, David Terestre, a March '98 Master of Liberal Arts (ALM) graduate of the Harvard Extension School, and his colleagues, all members of the Tufts University Police Department, staked out Tufts's Wren Hall. Upon a signal, they converged in one room. Their arrival caused quite a scramble among the 25 occupants.

The students, from several Boston-area colleges, were gathered around a laptop computer, posing for photos. Terestre and his colleagues had just apprehended a New Jersey ring of fraudulent ID card makers. In addition to a few thousand dollars (the fee for a fake ID was $100), the Tufts police officers confiscated the laptop, a digital camera, and software programs, all used to scan photos and false birthdates onto New Jersey licenses.

But Terestre did not always look forward to activities with the police. As an adolescent, his encounters with the law revolved around their efforts to restrain his rebellious lifestyle. "David was on the wild side as a youth," agreed Michael Bourg, executive director of West End House and a mentor and friend for three decades.

An active member of West End House as a youngster, Terestre now returns once or twice each week to talk with the children, to work on building projects, or to contribute to funding and other program needs. Now in his latest good works, Terestre has been shipping to West End House the abandoned bicycles that often litter the Tufts campus. By expanding the biking program for West End House in this way, many more children can make biking excursions throughout New England and Canada. "West End House kept me on a straight path--and off the streets--when I was young," Terestre explained. "Now it's my turn to help the kids."

While most police officers, municipal and university, pursue a master's degree in criminal justice, Terestre chose to attend Harvard to pursue a master's in psychology.

For his thesis, Terestre used a simulated unarmed robbery to investigate the reliability of witnesses' recall of facial characteristics. Adults from the Extension School and adolescents and children from West End House served as subjects. Each person watched a video-taped scene in which a 30-year-old man approaches a store counter, asks for a dollar bill, receives the money, and then departs. The incident, which lasts 35 seconds, corresponds to the length of a personal larceny. To avoid any possible trauma for the children, the man simply requested a dollar and disappeared. No weapon or aggressive behavior was displayed.

Six minutes later, using costly equipment available only to law enforcement agencies, Terestre asked each subject to reconstruct the image of the young man's face. Each adult, adolescent, and child layered dozens of transparencies of eyes, noses, hairstyles, brows, chins, and lips to match his or her memory of the man's face.

Why did Terestre make his subjects wait six minutes before attempting the memory recall task? In police investigations, officers arrive at the scene approximately six minutes after the incident in question. Terestre found in his research that witnesses' recall of facial characteristics improves with age.

Terestre attributes much of his success on the project to Professor Michelle Leichtman, his thesis director. "She is a fantastic person to work with--friendly, cordial, extremely knowledgeable in her field. She's very demanding--without being overbearing."

This March, Terestre received his ALM degree after five years of study. To achieve his goal, Terestre sacrificed a salary increase, but gained an enriched, broader understanding of himself, his community, and his career.