February 9, 2025
Many are calling for the police to take public accountability for the troubling misidentification.
Based on The Related Press, the New York Metropolis Police Division is going through backlash for falsely accusing a 15-year-old Black teen of a mass capturing on the West Indian American Day parade in September 2024 on social media.
Camden Lee, {the teenager} who was falsely accused by the NYPD, described to the information service what he felt when he first noticed his title and face hooked up to the capturing which resulted within the loss of life of 1 particular person and the wounding of 4 others.
“I see the NYPD emblem. I see me. I see ‘suspect needed for homicide,’” Lee recalled to the AP. “I couldn’t imagine what was occurring. Then every part went blurry.”
Lee’s mom, Chee Chee Brock, whose elder son lately joined the NYPD, indicated that the incident precipitated her to lose religion within the NYPD.
“I used to have loads of belief within the NYPD and the way they do issues,” Brock mentioned. “However I raised my youngsters to confess after they made a mistake. In case you can blame an harmless child for homicide, what else are you able to get away with?”
Though the NYPD privately met with Lee’s lawyer and scrubbed the {photograph} of him from their social media accounts, his household mentioned they really feel the division has not but taken any public accountability.
Delaney Kempner, the NYPD’s newly appointed spokesperson, and the division’s Deputy Commissioner for Public Info, indicated to the AP that she is going to look into what occurred, however didn’t elaborate additional.
Lee, who was on the parade when the capturing occurred, was captured in a surveillance picture watching in disbelief after his buddy was grazed within the shoulder by a bullet and subsequently carried away on a stretcher.
As soon as the police put out the picture positioning Lee because the suspect, his mom instantly referred to as a lawyer, Kenneth Montgomery, who arrange a gathering with NYPD murder detectives that evening.
Based on Montgomery, though the detectives mentioned the division made a mistake, their perspective rubbed him the improper manner.
“They conceded they acquired it improper,” Montgomery instructed the AP. “However these officers had been so cavalier about it. It was like they had been taking part in a sport with a child’s life.”
Based on Wylie Stecklow, a civil rights legal professional who can also be representing the household, the division’s incapability to come clean with a major mistake is a troubling growth.
“There’s great stress on the NYPD to serve up leads to a high-profile capturing like this,” Stecklow instructed the AP. “The truth that they’ve failed to elucidate how this error was made, and the way they’ll keep away from it sooner or later, is deeply troubling.”
The NYPD mentioned at a information convention instantly following the capturing that their suspect was a slim man in his 20s who wore a bandana and wore a paint-stained brown shirt and that they suspected that the capturing was gang-related, neither of which matched the now 16-year-old Lee.
Lee, in the meantime, has suffered academically because of the fallout from being falsely accused of the capturing and his mom worries for his security.
“As a mother, the No. 1 factor I’m afraid of is dropping my youngsters to the streets or the jail system,” Brock mentioned. “So he doesn’t have freedom now. When he goes to the nook retailer, I time him.”
The picture of Lee, though it was scrubbed from the division’s social media, was not pulled from media experiences, or defined by the NYPD publicly that Lee isn’t and by no means was confirmed to be the shooter, which led to the picture’s current recirculation, which for Lee, has introduced every part proper again to the place it was when he was first falsely accused of being the shooter by the NYPD.
“For the picture to return out once more, it introduced all of it again to the beginning,” Lee mentioned. “My mother was simply pondering of letting me go on the prepare once more. It takes me to a darkish place. I don’t really feel like myself anymore. I don’t have the chance to elucidate my aspect of the story. Everyone seems to be so mounted on this one picture of me: assassin.”
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