Gothamist
A non-profit newsroom, powered by WNYC.
Gothamist
Listen Live
News
Felix DeJesus’ family clings to hope, 2 years after he encountered NJ cops and vanished
By
Mike Hayes
Published Feb 2, 2024
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
Never miss a story
Email address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .
Haledon Borough Police Department
By
Mike Hayes
Published Feb 2, 2024
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
We rely on your support to make local news available to all
Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2026. Donate today
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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 general’s office did not provide a response to questions asking what, if any, update it has on the case, or if the strategy for pursuing it has changed with new leadership in charge. Paterson Police and the city’s public safety office both referred inquiries to the attorney general’s office.
DeJesus lived in nearby Haledon, whose police department formally leads the missing persons case. Haledon Police Deputy Chief George Guzman reaffirmed his department is “steadfast in our dedication to keeping hope alive” and pledged to continue working with local, county, state and federal authorities in a statement on Friday. And Paterson Mayor Andre Sayegh says that the city has erected billboards and still runs information about DeJesus on local access television.
Paterson and Haledon Police are offering a combined $15,000 reward for information that helps locate him.
“So we have, by all means, we're continuing to try to see if we can find Felix,” Sayegh said.
DeJesus’ disappearance
Paterson Police Officers Dodi Zorrilla and Jacob Feliciano responded to a call about a man harassing a woman at a bodega on the night of Feb. 2, 2022, according to reports from the Patterson Press. They arrived and encountered DeJesus, who appeared intoxicated, according to family members and media reports of the police account at the time. A woman told the officers that DeJesus picked her up and swung her around, but she said she didn’t want to make a formal complaint.
Body camera footage that the Paterson Press obtained via a lawsuit shows what happens next. DeJesus is seen face-down on the ground as he's handcuffed. In Spanish, he asks why he’s being arrested, but the officer handcuffing him doesn’t answer. DeJesus complains that his hand is broken, but again, the officers don’t respond.
They then put him in the back of their squad car and turn off the cameras. State law says officers are required to leave their cameras on for the duration of the time that they have someone in custody.
Yannick Wood, director of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice's criminal justice reform program and a former Queens County assistant district attorney, said the officers' decision to turn off their cameras is one of the most frustrating aspects of this case.
Body camera footage makes cases stronger and protects law enforcement, “but the safeguard was not used and everybody suffers as a result of this,” he said.
DeJesus was never formally arrested. Instead, DeJesus asked the officers to take him to the nearby park, according to past police accounts to media. When they got there, the officers said they let DeJesus, who was only in a T-shirt, out near a river.
The two officers that took DeJesus into custody were initially suspended 90 days without pay. But Zorrilla appealed, saying he’d been following his training officer’s guidance during the incident, and a court reduced his suspension to two days. Feliciano did not appeal his own suspension.
“That’s very disrespectful to the family,” Giovanni DeJesus said. “It’s like a slap in the face to us.”
Avenues for accountability
Civil rights attorney Beth Baldinger said DeJesus’ family could have a viable legal claim against the police because they didn’t seek medical attention for him.
“He was not in full proper health condition, obviously subjected to the elements. It certainly is my impression [police] should have followed appropriate protocol and secured this individual medical attention,” she said.
Family members said they’d considered a suit, but had been advised that they would need to declare Felix dead and appoint an administrator of his estate in order to have standing.
“For us to claim our brother is deceased, that's not happening. You got to actually see [that he’s dead],” Giovanni DeJesus said.
Baldinger and others say that it’s possible that a court could make an exception – what is known as tolling the statute – essentially, stopping the clock – in order to provide more time to file the complaint. And Joseph Grimes, an attorney who’s practiced in New Jersey for 47 years and has brought wrongful death cases against the police, said the family could argue to the courts that they're trying to protect their rights as heirs amid a lack of information on DeJesus’ whereabouts.
“Even if that were dismissed, at least you have the argument that you started it within the statute of limitations,” Baldinger said.
But Crystal Garcia said the family members don't think a lawsuit would help even if they want the police to "pay for what they did." She said family members struggled to even get police to acknowledge the encounter with DeJesus when they first realized he was missing.
“I just feel that we didn't get the attention and the first 48 hours that we were supposed to get right away,” Garcia said.
For its part, the attorney general’s office says that the field training program at the Paterson Police Department has been revised under its watch. New members are trained by “experienced officers with dedicated supervision.” Feliciano, one of the two officers in the case, had been on the job for less than a year that night when he was tasked with training Zorrilla, who had graduated from the police academy just a few weeks earlier.
“Academy graduates now spend six months in the training division,” said Robert Rowan, a spokesperson for the attorney general's office. “Most of that time is spent walking a beat in an area of the city under the watch of a field training officer before moving on to the responsibilities of a permanent patrol assignment.”
Zellie Thomas, of Paterson Black Lives Matter, said the DeJesus case is one of many that undercut community trust in police. Along with wanting more transparency around what’s going on with the DeJesus investigation, he wants police officials to explain what they’ve done to prevent future episodes like this.
“I don't think publicly the police department has done a good job of showing the public that something went wrong in their eyes and they understand something went wrong,” he said.
The Haledon Police Department posted on Facebook on Friday morning that it has “diligently taken every effort with their means” to find answers, and asked the community for its continued help. It described DeJesus as being 5-foot-9, weighing about 200 pounds, and having a Puerto Rican flag tattooed on his chest. Police are also asking anyone with information to contact them at [email protected], or 973-790-4444.
In the comments, Giovanni DeJesus responded: “If the two Paterson Police Department cops never took him up there he would’ve been good and home with us.”
Tagged
public safety
new jersey
Mike Hayes
Mike Hayes covers equity and access to opportunity in New Jersey. He joined WNYC and Gothamist in 2023. Before that, he worked as a freelance journalist writing about policing and criminal justice. He has written for ProPublica, CNN, HuffPost, BuzzFeed News and The Appeal. He is also the author of the book, “The Secret Files: Bill De Blasio, The NYPD, and the Broken Promises of Police Reform.” In 2019, he was a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists.
Read more
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
MORE news
Retired NYPD detective charged in George Washington Bridge killing out on $1M bail
Victor Romero, who retired from the police department in 2001
By
Michael Sol Warren
Published Oct 25, 2026 at 10:25 a.m. ET
Suicides decline in NYC, but inequities persist across groups
New data shows suicide taking an outsize toll among Latino New Yorkers, even as overall deaths fell.
By
Jill Webb
News
Suicides decline in NYC, but inequities persist across groups
New data shows suicide taking an outsize toll among Latino New Yorkers, even as overall deaths fell.
By
Jill Webb
Cuts to rural healthcare become key issue for upstate votes in race for NY governor
By
Samuel King
NY Archdiocese will soon settle $800M clergy sexual abuse claims
By
Arya Sundaram
Chinatown residents file lawsuit against after-hours construction on new 'mega jail'
By
Arya Sundaram
Never miss a story
Catch up on the most important headlines with a roundup of essential NYC stories, delivered to your inbox daily.
Sign upEmail address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .