Felix DeJesus’ family is holding onto hopes of finding him alive two years after police in Paterson, New Jersey dropped him off in a city park, inebriated and wearing a T-shirt as temperatures dropped below freezing.
“We keep going around the spots, asking people questions, but nothing has come up yet,” his brother Giovanni DeJesus said. But maintaining that hope has been a struggle amid a lack of signs of DeJesus’ possible whereabouts — or whether he’s still alive.
DeJesus has been missing since the night of Feb. 2, 2022. In the time since, the state attorney general’s office has taken over Paterson’s troubled police department after years of investigations into police corruption, criminality and excessive use of force. Despite the new leadership and promised reforms, DeJesus’ family members say they have trouble trusting that the search for him continues in earnest or that police will ever be able to provide them with answers.
They also doubt they’ll ever see real accountability for what police reformers, the city’s mayor and the attorney general’s office all agree was a flawed handling of the call that brought DeJesus into contact with officers. As the second anniversary of the encounter with police, Friday marks a deadline for the family to pursue a civil case against the police — which would be complicated because DeJesus is formally considered missing, not deceased.
Family members also doubt any lawsuit could bring them the answers they need.
“We’re not after money. We’re after the answers and our loved one. And if even by suing the city, we won’t get those answers it is almost pointless,” said Crystal Garcia, Giovanni DeJesus’ wife.
Giovanni DeJesus said law enforcement has not updated the family since August, when they searched the river that runs through the park again. And not knowing what happened to Felix is wearing on the family.
“Right now at this moment we feel like we have overturned every stone,” Garcia said.
The attorney…
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