The New York Police Department apologized on Sunday for falsely accusing a teenager of a deadly shooting at a Brooklyn parade last year and then declining to retract the allegation for months after privately admitting that the department had been wrong.
The apology came after months of pleas from the family of the teenager, Camden Lee, 16, and an investigation by The Associated Press, which reported that the police “almost immediately” realized they had made a mistake. But it would take nearly five months for the department to publicly acknowledge that its accusation — posted in September and later quietly removed from social media — was unfounded.
In a statement on Sunday, the department said that it had mistakenly posted Mr. Lee’s picture online as someone who “was wanted for the fatal shooting” at the West Indian American Day Parade, an annual celebration held on and around Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn every September. The shooting killed one person and injured four more, spreading panic through a large crowd of revelers. The police have not charged anyone in connection with the shooting.
The apology from the department did not mention Mr. Lee by name, but said the person shown in the picture that was shared had been a person of interest, not a suspect. The term “person of interest” is a broad category that can include people who the police think may have information useful to an investigation.
“The N.Y.P.D. identified a person of interest who was on the scene before, during and after the incident, which is supported by video evidence and witness accounts,” the department said in the statement. “Social media posts in September mistakenly stated that he was wanted for the fatal shooting, rather than stating that he was a person of interest.”
“The N.Y.P.D. should have immediately corrected this misstatement,” it continued. “We apologize for the error, and will continue to seek justice for the victims of this shooting.”
The police did not immediately respond to a request to explain the delay in correcting their statements about Mr. Lee.
On Monday, Wylie M. Stecklow, Mr. Lee’s lawyer, criticized the apology for not doing more to acknowledge the harm that the false accusation had caused to his client, and for continuing to refer to him as a person of interest.
“They say he is a person of interest because he was in this location before, during and after the shooting, but so were thousands of other people,” Mr. Stecklow said. “To a lay person, that sounds like he still did something wrong.”
“The police need to make a full-throated apology and need to make it clear how this happened,” Mr. Stecklow added. “There is no explanation as to how a minor who is not a suspect in a murder has his pictures released on social media, and why for months they failed to retract it.”
Mr. Lee had attended the parade with friends and witnessed the shooting on Sept. 2, according to his lawyer.
On Sept. 19, the Police Department posted his picture on Instagram and X and mistakenly said he had “discharged a firearm” at the parade and was wanted for the shooting.
Mr. Lee learned that the police had shared his picture online only when he saw the post on social media. His family hired a lawyer and met with the police a few days later, when investigators told them that he was not actually a suspect, Mr. Stecklow said.
In the ensuing months, the police declined to bring charges against Mr. Lee and removed his photograph from their social media accounts. But they did not retract or clarify their initial allegations against him.
In that vacuum, Mr. Stecklow said, Mr. Lee’s family had their lives turned upside down.
Speaking to The A.P. earlier this month, Mr. Lee said the accusation against him “takes me to a dark place.”
“I don’t feel like myself anymore,” he told The A.P. “I don’t have the opportunity to explain my side of the story. Everyone is so fixed on this one image of me: murderer.”
After the police first shared Mr. Lee’s image, his family left New York City for three weeks because of death threats he said they received, Mr. Stecklow said. That caused him and two of his siblings to miss school.
In December, the Police Department announced a reward for information leading to the arrest of a suspect in the parade shooting — but only after they had first announced a reward for information in the high-profile fatal shooting of a health care executive in Midtown Manhattan, Mr. Stecklow said.
The police did not mention Mr. Lee, but because the department’s initial error had never been corrected, Mr. Stecklow said the reward announcement led to his picture being shared online once again by amateur sleuths. That caused Mr. Lee’s mother to leave the city with him again for several weeks, Mr. Stecklow said.
In a statement, Mr. Lee’s mother, Chee Chee Brock, said her life had “completely changed” since the Police Department made its initial mistake.
Ms. Brock, whose oldest son graduated from the police academy in October, said in the statement that she believed in the importance of “raising my kids right and to be respectful of law enforcement.”
“But now,” she continued, “I am fearful that the N.Y.P.D., or someone who thinks my child has harmed someone they care about, can take my child from me, and it really just makes me very afraid.”
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