NEW YORK – Camden Lee was leaving high school football practice in September when he saw the photograph, splashed across the New York Police Department’s social media accounts, that would soon upend his life.
In a crisp surveillance image, the 15-year-old stands alone in a hoodie and shorts, eyes cast down on a Brooklyn street. “The pictured individual,” police declared in an accompanying caption, had “discharged a firearm” at the West Indian American Day parade, killing one person and wounding four others.
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“I see the NYPD logo. I see me. I see ‘suspect wanted for murder,’” Lee recalled. “I couldn’t believe what was happening. Then everything went blurry.”
In private, police backpedaled almost immediately. After meeting with Lee and his lawyer, they declined to bring charges, then quietly removed his photograph from their X and Instagram accounts. But they have not publicly acknowledged the retraction, ignoring the repeated pleas of Lee and his mother, who say their lives remain threatened by the falsehood.
The family’s search for answers has raised questions about the NYPD’s policies for correcting misinformation at a time when the department is already facing scrutiny for other social media misrepresentations.
“I used to have a lot of trust in the NYPD and how they do things,” said Lee’s mother, Chee Chee Brock, whose older son recently joined the force. “But I raised my kids to admit when they made a mistake. If you can blame an innocent kid for murder, what else can you get away with?”
The department’s newly appointed chief spokesperson, Deputy Commissioner for Public Information Delaney Kempner, said she would look into the matter but did not answer a list of questions or provide further information.
It remains unclear why Lee was identified as a suspect.
The day of the shooting, Lee said, he left football practice and stopped at the annual Labor Day celebration of Caribbean culture with a teammate at around 1 p.m. Minutes later, as gunfire erupted along the route, his friend was grazed in the shoulder. The surveillance image, Lee said, showed his stunned expression after hearing gunshots for the first time, then watching his bloodied friend carted away on a stretcher.
When police published it, on Sept. 19, Lee's mother immediately contacted an attorney, Kenneth Montgomery, who offered to set up a meeting with homicide detectives that night. But police told the lawyer to bring the teen to Brooklyn’s 77th precinct station the following week. At the meeting — according to Montgomery, Lee and his mother — the detectives said he was not a suspect.
“They conceded they got it wrong,” Montgomery said. “But these officers were so cavalier about it. It was like they were playing a game with a kid’s life.”
By then the NYPD’s communications division had widely distributed the photograph of Lee to media outlets and TV stations, which urged people to come forward with tips about the unnamed suspect.
In recent weeks a high-ranking department official has urged some outlets not to use the image in follow-up stories about the shooting, according to text messages shared with The Associated Press. But those conversations with reporters were “off the record,” preventing news sites from explaining why the photograph was removed.
In the absence of official clarification, the photo has continued to circulate online, triggering a barrage of death threats against Lee from online sleuths who tracked down his own social media accounts.
As he got ready for school on a recent morning, Lee pulled up an Instagram page with 750,000 followers and scrolled through the comments below his photograph.
“He about to get found quick,” one read. Another said simply: “He done.” Others tagged friends and family of Denzel Chan, 25, who was killed in the shooting. “They deserve answers too,” Lee said of Chan's loved ones.
At a news conference immediately following the shooting, NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell said the violence was gang-related. He described the suspect as a slim man in his 20s who wore a paint-stained brown shirt and bandana. Lee, who turned 16 in January, wore neither in the photograph released weeks later.
Fearing possible gang retaliation, Brock, a single mother who works at the post office, moved her son and two daughters to a relative’s home outside the city. Lee missed weeks of school, hurting his grades, as evidenced by a report card hanging on the fridge. While the family has since returned to Brooklyn, Lee has been forbidden by his mother from moving around alone.
“As a mom, the No. 1 thing I’m scared of is losing my kids to the streets or the jail system,” said Brock. “So he doesn’t have freedom now. When he goes to the corner store, I time him.”
It has not escaped the family’s attention that the mistaken identification came at a uniquely tumultuous time for city police. In the 17 days between the shooting and the release of the photo, federal agents seized phones from Police Commissioner Edward Caban, who then resigned, telling officers that the investigation “created a distraction for the department.”
“There’s tremendous pressure on the NYPD to serve up results in a high-profile shooting like this,” said Wylie Stecklow, a civil rights attorney who is representing the family as they weigh a possible lawsuit. “The fact that they’ve failed to explain how this mistake was made, and how they’ll avoid it in the future, is deeply troubling.”
As the department seeks to rehabilitate its image, its communications strategy has also come under fire. A recent report from the city’s Department of Investigation faulted certain NYPD executives for “irresponsible and unprofessional” use of social media and called on the department to codify its policies around deleting public posts, as other city agencies have done.
In an earlier social media post, Chell, who has since been promoted to chief of department, mistakenly identified a judge he accused of letting a predator back into the community. That post, too, was deleted.
In December, just when the initial wave of attention around Lee began to subside, police announced they were upping the reward for information about the shooting to $10,000. This time they did not circulate Lee's photo.
But without official confirmation that Lee was no longer a suspect, many news stations and newspapers ran the old image of him anyway. It remains all over the internet, including atop some news stories.
“For the photo to come out again, it brought it all back to the start,” Lee said. “My mom was just thinking of letting me go on the train again.”
Lately, he said, he can sense people looking at him, whispering behind back, as he walks through his neighborhood or the hallways at school. He has considered cutting his hair or buying new clothes in the hopes of passing unrecognized. Some days he prefers not to leave home at all.
“It takes me to a dark place,” Lee said. “I don’t feel like myself anymore. I don’t have the opportunity to explain my side of the story. Everyone is so fixed on this one image of me: murderer.”