Enger Javier

Enger Javier.

Know that name. Google it on your own time. Pick any story you want to read and get informed (start with this brilliant Gawker piece). If you really want to know Manuel Gomez, it begins and ends with the story of Enger Javier — a young innocent man who was wrongly arrested for a murder he did not commit and spent several brutal years on Rikers Island before Gomez solved his case and helped set him free. In fact, it was when Pedro’s mother, Jessica, saw a news story about this on television two years ago that she knew Gomez was just the type of dude her family needed to get to the bottom of things. What I’m about to tell you is stranger than fiction. If I made it up and put it on television, it would seem far-fetched. It’s true. It’s all true. I’ve double and triple checked everything here. This story will tell you everything you need to know about Manuel Gomez and how the justice system works in The Bronx and get you ready for the hammer that’s about to drop later in this piece on Detective David Terrell and the network of police, prosecutors, and government officials that have protected him across the years.

On the night of August 19th, 2012 a young Dominican brother named Hansell Arias was brutally stabbed to death in The Bronx. A security camera, (footage seen below) captured the entire ordeal, including men chasing Hansell until they caught up, beat him, then stabbed him to death. The whole thing was terrible.

Also in the video is a young brother named Enger Javier. As the men who killed Hansell are seen chasing him, Enger appears to not even notice exactly what’s going on. He’s clearly drinking a Coke and talking to a young woman. That didn’t stop police in The Bronx from arresting Enger that night. He had absolutely nothing to do with the murder. About a dozen people actually saw who did it. For two straight days police interrogated Enger, denied him a chance to see an attorney, then arrested him and charged him with the murder of Hansell Arias.

Never mind the fact that police recovered someone else’s bloody clothes on the scene. Never mind that Enger was clearly seen on the video minding his own business. Never mind that witnesses saw and even told police who actually did it. Never mind that DNA under the fingernails of the victim belonged to someone else. The police were determined to pin it on Enger. Truth be damned. They brought people in to identify Enger in a lineup. Not a single person was clear.

Then, after being interrogated for three straight days without an attorney, a man finally said it was Enger Javier who killed Hansell Arias. Jansel Paula said he was denied sleep, food, and water for three straight days and told that he would go to prison for 20 years if he didn’t sign a statement saying that Enger Javier murdered Hansell Arias. When he finally broke and signed the statement, they released him and immediately placed Enger under arrest for Hansell’s murder. Enger was then sent straight to Rikers Island where he languished for nearly two straight years without ever seeing a judge — all while the men who actually murdered Hansell Arias went free and actually continued murdering other people.

With Enger behind bars for a murder he had absolutely nothing to do with, his family saved and saved and saved to bail him out. Their fear was that he would be killed in Rikers by men loyal to the guys who actually killed Hansell Arias. It appears such a hit was actually in the works.

Enter Manuel Gomez.

These are his words,

The first time I heard about Enger Javier was on July 17 2014. A bail bonds company contacted me in regards to putting on a GPS Anckle bracelet on Enger Javier because his family was attempting to bail him out from Rikers Island. That’s something I do. I told the bond company that I had to investigate the case first before I took custody of Enger because he was being accused of murder. After three days of investigating the evidence, I felt that Enger Javier was most likely innocent. I then met with his mother and told her I believed he is innocent and that I would prove her son didn’t commit the murder. She cried and hugged me and thanked me. They couldn’t even pay me so I actually did the case for free because I believed so much in his innocence. I don’t work for guilty people and I’ve never lost a case like this. I then went in front of Judge Barrett and Assistant District Attorney John Morabito in court and I was grilled for 30 minutes on why I was taking custody of Enger. I told the judge I bet my license he is innocent. This is why I would take him in my custody. Every single day I investigated the Enger case I found a new piece of evidence that led to his innocence. I found the video. I found witness after witness who saw him and knew full well that he didn’t do it. I even found the men who did it and tracked them down. We even found through discovery that police and the District Attorney held on to the video that proved Enger was innocent for three full years before they admitted they had it. They never even tested the bloody clothes for DNA or tested the DNA under the fingernails of the victim. Because they knew if they did, it would all prove Enger was innocent.

What happened next is about the craziest damn thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life and I’ve heard some crazy shit.

On the strength of good old fashioned detective work, Gomez identifed the actual killers of Hansell Arias as Jose Rodriguez and Jesus Reyes — who literally turned out to be serial killers. For nearly three straight years, Gomez told the NYPD and the Bronx District Attorney’s Office that Rodriguez and Reyes murdered Hansell Arias. He showed them the video. He showed them a Facebook video he found of the men bragging about killing Arias. Finally, to prove it, Gomez literally tracked Jose Rodriguez to the church he had started attending. With a DNA collection device cupped in his hand, he went up and introduced himself to Rodriguez, shook his hand, and took a little blood prick in the process. Investigator Gomez then tested the DNA results to prove that it was Rodriguez who killed Hansell Arias.

It was. Enger Javier was then set free and the charges were dismissed. Not a single shred of evidence pointed to his guilt and the man who was coerced by the police to give the false identification had recanted long ago. This came after Enger spent over 700 days of his life at Rikers Island.

He sued the City of New York.

Here’s the full lawsuit. It’s as terrible as you could imagine. You should read it.

Of course, he won, and New York was forced to pay him $800,000. For his own safety, Enger has had to move out of state and has been permanently scarred by this experience. Not a single person from the NYPD or the Bronx DA’s Office was held accountable. Nobody at all. The city simply wrote a check and kept on moving. This is the New York way. In fact, New York City has now paid nearly $2 billion out to victims of police brutality and corruption — the most of any known city in the world. The payouts are literally a line item on New York’s annual budget. The city is fully willing to foot the bill without changing the root causes of the problems.

Jesus Reyes and Jose Rodriguez being indicted for actually killing Hansell Arias

Then, just a few months ago, a full five years after Hansell Arias was murdered, the NYPD finally arrested the two men everybody told them were the actual murderers. But guess what? Gomez has proven that both of these men have murdered at least two other people since the NYPD and the Bronx DA’s Office let them off the hook five years ago when the police tried to frame Enger Javier for it. In a few months, you’ll be hearing more about this.

Manuel Gomez did all of that. He found the video. He found the witnesses. He found the DNA. He found the killers. He presented the evidence to the NYPD. He got the charges dropped on Enger Javier. And when Jessica Perez, mother of teenager Pedro Hernandez, heard this, she knew she had to contact him.

Enter NYPD Detective David Terrell.

Detective David Terrell

But don’t let it be a black and a white one ’Cause they’ll slam ya down to the street top. Black police showing out for the white cop.

— Ice Cube, NWA, “Fuck The Police”

In the Bronx, NYPD Detective David Terrell is called “the terror.” I’ve heard him called a “monster,” a “terrorist,” “evil,” and have had multiple families tell me he’s “the worst human being” they’ve encountered in their entire lives. Earlier today I was meeting with a family he has terrorized and the mother almost started crying at the very mention of his name. I believe them. I’ve written nearly a thousand stories on police brutality and David Terrell is one of the top three worst people I’ve ever profiled. The other two cops are in prison. Terrell should join them. It’s a crime that he is still on the force and has been allowed to terrorize thousands of families over the course of his career. His brutality is well-documented. As one of the most brutal men in the history of the department, his case file is enormous.

I’ve traveled uptown to The Bronx on the train from my home in Brooklyn to go meet many of the families that he has terrorized and to hear for myself what he has done to them.

“Shaun. Let me show you how much of a terrorist, a menace, a monster Detective David Terrell has been in this community,” said Manuel Gomez.

“Let’s play a game where we talk to complete strangers on the street. I’ll ask them if they’ve heard of Terrell, or had an encounter with him, and I bet you that at least 50% of the people we speak to have a story to tell,” Gomez continued.

I took him up on it and sure enough, he was right. Wherever we went — down random hallways in the projects, on the basketball courts, down the sidewalk, or in a courtyard, Gomez would ask people if they’ve ever heard of Terrell or had an encounter with him, and at least 50% of the people had a horrible, painful story to tell. Gomez would never lead them on either. Before he’d describe what Detective Terrell looked like, he’d ask people to describe him first, just to prove to me that they knew who they were talking about. As crass as it sounds, people in the community consistently described him first with just three words, “big, black, and bald” before immediately describing how he had wronged them or their loved one in some horrible way. The truth is, though, that long before Terrell began targeting Pedro and his family, he terrorized people all over New York.

What’s most troubling about this is that an enormous paper trail of his destruction exists going all the way back to when he entered the force. The city has paid out claim after claim on his behalf and currently has hundreds of millions of dollars of lawsuits pending against him. Yet he still remains on the force. Today, we detail the criminal transgressions of Detective David Terrell, of the 42nd Precinct, first and foremost, to bring him to justice. Secondly, he is also a symbol.

“I know of at least a dozen different David Terrell’s on this force,” said Sgt. Edwin Raymond, an NYPD officer in Brooklyn who is a member of the NYPD12 — the collection of award-winning officers suing the city and the department for forcing illegal arrest quotas on officers.

Over the course of my investigation into the 42nd Precinct, several people told me that Detective David Terrell had between 30–40 CCRB’s. The CCRB is the Civilian Complaint Review Board. On the street, it’s common for people to talk about how many CCRB’s an officer has accumulated. When I asked Sgt. Raymond what he thought about people saying Terrell had between 30–40 CCRB’s, he said, “That’s a staggering number. Five is a lot. 10 is wild. 30 is outrageous. But here’s the thing, when I was going through my training in the academy, they literally told us, “If you aren’t piling up CCRB’s, you’re not doing it right.”

I ran Sgt. Raymond’s words by half a dozen other officers and each of them told me they heard some version of the same thing. CCRB’s are worn as a badge of honor. Accumulating 30–40 of them makes Detective David Terrell a cult legend inside of the department and explains, officers told me, why he was made a detective and allowed to get away with so much.