SAN JOSE — No charges will be filed against a Santa Teresa High School teacher and coach who was investigated earlier this year for using a rope to make a noose gesture to a black student, after the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office determined the act did not legally qualify as a hate crime.

To file criminal charges, prosecutors had to be certain they could convince a jury that the student felt threatened by the teacher’s gesture. An investigation by San Jose police found the teacher did not make any physical contact, with the rope or otherwise, with the student.

“Although this behavior did not meet the elements of a crime, it also did not meet the elements of how people should treat one another,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen said Tuesday. “If someone’s ignorance crosses the line into criminality, my office will not hesitate to prosecute.”

Rev. Reginald Swilley, co-chair of the Black Leadership Kitchen Cabinet — which first brought the incident to public attention in June — voiced dismay about the decision.

“The psychological intimidation of a minor should be a hate crime,” Swilley said.

He added that the lack of criminal consequence for the teacher feels more pronounced given historical inequities in how law enforcement has treated the black community in the United States.

“We are over-prosecuted and under-protected,” Swilley said. “A black child should have the comfort that the people we pay to protect him will enforce the law when he is a victim just as much as when he is an aggressor.”

According to police, the teacher and recent assistant football coach, whose name has not been publicly released, was with student football players on campus April 30 when he took an exercise rope and put it around his own neck. The teacher, who is white, reportedly turned to the lone black student in the group, and said something to the effect of “stay away from me.”

Sources familiar with the investigation told this news organization that the teacher reportedly meant the remark as a joke, but the student was visibly offended.

An investigation was launched by police on May 15 after being alerted by the civil-rights group Black Leadership Kitchen Cabinet of Silicon Valley, which was contacted by the student and his family.

The teacher has been on paid administrative leave. Since then, the East Side Union High School District board of trustees has moved to dismiss the teacher, and a hearing before an administrative law judge is scheduled for October. Superintendent Chris Funk denounced the incident after it surfaced but has otherwise been circumspect in his remarks because of the pending legal proceedings.

“We don’t want anyone with that type of behavior in our organization,” Funk said. “We’ll address this in the due process we need to follow.”

The encounter occurred as the state Office of the Attorney General and a state auditor report tracked a sharp rise in hate crimes in California, with the Bay Area charting a 30 percent increase last year.

To Swilley, the teacher’s act and lack of swift consequence is part of a series of disparities his community faces in public education.

“The school system is supposed to nurture him and educate him,” he said. “What we’re finding out is this type of issue is causing kids to feel like outsiders on their own school campus.”