Six months after 20-year-old Jose Cepeda was shot dead on what turned out to be the most violent day of 2020 in the city, all his mother has left are the candles and makeshift shrine outside their Brooklyn home.
No, 41-year-old Rosemary Negron said adamantly, she is not hopeful the killer will be brought to justice. “How long am I going to be waiting?” she fumed. “A year? Two years?”
Cepeda was one of nine people shot dead and 39 people wounded in 30 shootings over a 24-hour period in the five boroughs on July 5, the deadliest day of a brutal, blood-soaked summer crime surge.
So far, cops have made arrests in just four of the day’s nine murders, and in four of 22 other non-fatal shootings.
That trend’s not limited to July 5.
By year’s end, there were 463 murders, 144 more than the year before, a rise of 44%. Police “cleared,” or solved, 54% – substantially less than the 69% clearance the year before.
The clearance rate in the 1,531 non-fatal shootings in 2020 was even worse – 32%, compared to a rate of 42% for such crimes in other years.
The biggest problem? No one wants to talk.
When a Minneapolis cop killed George Floyd on May 25 by putting a knee to his neck for nearly eight minutes, it sparked weeks of protest and outrage in and around the country, including in New York.
Rodney Harrison, the NYPD’s chief of detectives, said the protests slowed investigations by pulling thousands of cops, including detectives, off their usual assignments.
Even worse, Harrison said, the protests fomented anti-police sentiment that made it harder for detectives to get help from witnesses they needed to solve cases.
“We definitely took a punch in the chest regarding people willing to come forward and cooperate,” Harrison said.
“There was a disconnect in 2020. We saw it. People were just uncomfortable talking to us.”
After an arrest police often gather more evidence to strengthen the case.
But Harrison said because of an anti-police mood, prosecutors — anticipating suspicious jurors — are more likely to tell detectives that they need more evidence than before to even make a bust. That includes an ID from someone other than the victim, DNA evidence, fingerprints, or cell phone records.
One obstacle that will eventually go away are the masks New Yorkers wear to fight the pandemic. The masks make facial recognition harder, and finding video showing suspects faces’ clearly is harder, Harrison said.
Getting a killer’s unmasked face on camera, and proving it’s the right person to a grand jury, means building a time-consuming “video compilation” that tracks the shooter’s movements from the scene of the crime to when he or she finally removes the mask, sometimes blocks away.
Still, Harrison said, cases are getting made. Some have taken longer than expected, he said, because the pandemic halted grand juries and trials for several months, but he believes the department’s clearance rate will rise.
The teenage brother of 23-year-old Stephon Johnson — shot dead July 5 in a building on W. 116th St. near Morningside Park in Harlem — said an arrest would help him through his grief.
“It would help to know that whoever did this couldn’t do nothing like this anymore…. that their actions get penalized for what they did,” the 16-year-old said.
As with many of that day’s shootings, cops believe gang violence played a role in Johnson’s death.
“I feel like they (the police) are taking their time,” Johnson’s brother said. “I’m still kind of down, but no, it doesn’t surprise me.”
An arrest can bring victim’s families a sense of closure and peace, but for the mother of Jahrell Gause, 21, it didn’t change the grim truth that her son is gone.
“At the end of the day, all we can do is visit a tombstone,” said Gause’s mother, Susan Edwards.
Gause was shot in a Brownsville playground near the Glenmore Houses, after a gunman opened fire into a crowd as part of an ongoing gang feud, cops said. Corey Henry, 18, was busted Jan. 8.
“It’s good that he’s locked up — don’t get me wrong,” Edwards said. “But he’s going to get sentenced. His parents can come visit him. His mother, his father can still see him. He gets to live.
“Jahrell is still gone for the rest of our lives.”
Her son’s absence led Edwards down a dark path.
“I just lost myself,” she said. “I tried to commit suicide. I’m just lost without my son.”
For Negron, six months without an arrest has left her seething — and blaming the police for what she sees as a lack of urgency, a lack of concern.
She said she gave cops the nickname of the man who killed her son, though it’s not clear if police believe he pulled the trigger.
A police source said Negron’s grief is understandable but that detectives are fully vested in the investigation.
Cops suspect the slaying is linked to a gang — one of 91 gang-related murders in 2020. Cooperating witnesses are hard to find in gang killings.
Negron believes the seeds of her son’s murder were planted in May, when he confronted squatters in their building.
Late July 4, Negron was barbecuing outside with Cepeda and her 4-year-old son, when one of the men returned and started arguing with Cepeda.
Just before 12:45 a.m. July 5, he came back and shot Cepeda, she said.
But detectives, she said, haven’t fully interviewed her about what she saw or released any photo of the killer.
“Like how is anybody around here supposed to know who to look out for?” she asked. “I don’t see my son’s case ever getting solved, I lost hope and faith in the system.
“They are supposed to protect us and instead I feel so alone, so helpless.”
