SOUL SNATCHERS: Countering the State Sponsored Conspiracy to Destroy Pedro Hernandez (Part 3)
https://medium.com/@ShaunKing/soul-snatchers-countering-the-state-sponsored-conspiracy-to-destroy-pedro-hernandez-part-3-1b6307828eb6
Have you ever been arrested by the police and charged with a crime you didn’t commit? I don’t mean pulled over for a speeding ticket. I don’t mean harassed or ridiculed. I don’t mean treated like a suspect.
(Read Part 1 of Soul Snatchers HERE & Part 2 HERE.)
I’m asking, have you ever been arrested by the police, then charged by a prosecutor, then sent to jail to await trial, for a crime you absolutely did not commit? Do you know anyone personally who this has happened to? I don’t mean have you heard of a person who was falsely arrested and charged, then later exonerated, but do you know someone?
Before he even had a chance to graduate high school, standout student Pedro Hernandez, a good kid from The Bronx, had his entire life flash before his eyes with such false arrests and charges — not once, or twice, which would be absolutely outrageous, but seven different times.
This series is called “Soul Snatchers” for a reason. When another Bronx teenager, Kalief Browder, was arrested and charged for a crime he did not commit, and then left to rot in jail on Rikers Island for three years without ever being found guilty of a crime, he was routinely beaten and humiliated in the worst possible ways. When the charges were eventually dismissed, and he was simply let out without as much as an apology, his injured body was functioning, but his soul had been ripped out and damaged beyond repair. Kalief’s family surrounded him with love and support. Jay Z and Rosie O’Donnell did the same. The three years in Rikers, though, had damaged Kalief in ways that were mostly invisible to us, but painfully real to him.
Earlier this week I sat and had breakfast with Pedro Hernandez and his family. Fighting back tears, his mother Jessica told me that all of the false arrests, all of the fake charges, and all of the times in and out of jail — where he, too, was brutally beaten and abused — has left her son a hollow shell of his former self. He’s sometimes jumpy and nervous. He won’t leave the house — afraid that it may all happen again. She can hardly get him to leave his room. The smell of certain foods reminds of him of Rikers and he simply can’t eat.
Two straight years of hell on earth haven’t simply hardened him — they appear to have changed his very nature. He’s still Pedro. He still responds when you call his name. He still remembers wonderful memories and moments from his childhood, but he’s just not the same. And how could he be?
What I am about to tell you is the story of criminal conspiracy by the NYPD, the Bronx District Attorney’s Office, and the City of New York to destroy Pedro Hernandez. After Kalief died, in photo op after photo op and press conference after press conference, elected officials and city leaders pledged that what happened to Kalief would never happen to another child in this city again. They lied. It’s happening to kids all over New York City — particularly in The Bronx — and it’s happening to Pedro Hernandez right now. He’s on life’s edge and his future continues to hang in the balance.
“I knew we were in trouble when Detective David Terrell of the 42nd Precinct got my cell phone number off of a report from my oldest son and started calling me at home,” said Jessica Perez, mother of Pedro Hernandez. “That was all the way back in 2011. He wouldn’t even pretend to talk about police matters. It started with him literally having the nerve to ask me if I would cook Spanish food for him then it got worse from there. That was in October. I changed my number a few months later because he just wouldn’t let up.”
This is a common refrain heard from families who were targeted by Terrell. At least five different women have now gone on the record to say that he sexually harassed them and offered to stop targeting their kids if they’d give in and have sex with him.
When I first heard Pedro’s story — that he was an innocent kid locked up at Rikers — being framed by police and prosecutors — I wanted to believe it, but I just couldn’t afford to take his friends and family at their word. The allegations were so outrageous, and so damning, that if true, only a criminal conspiracy of historic proportions could explain such a thing.
On December 15th, 2014, the NYPD, in concert with the Bronx DA’s office, began a full on assault against 15-year-old Pedro Hernandez. He was a sweet kid in a rough neighborhood, and had never been arrested before. He never should’ve been arrested.
Standing on a corner near 168th Street in the Bronx, Pedro was talking to his brother’s friends, who were sitting inside of a double-parked car. When police from the 42nd Precinct pulled up in an unmarked car, they got out and asked Pedro to do something he had never heard before. “Get in the car,” the officer demanded to Pedro, speaking of the car his brother’s friends were in. On TV, he had heard police officers yell for people to “get out of the car,” but he had never heard them demand that someone get into someone else’s car. Pedro then told the officer that he lived close by and didn’t need a ride. The officer repeated his order, “I need you to get in the car.” So Pedro complied. This simple moment was a turning point in Pedro’s life.
At almost the very instant the driver of the car shifted it into drive and moved it forward less than 30 inches, police turned their flashing lights on and ordered the car to stop. They had asked Pedro to get into the back seat for a reason — they could not arrest him, as they planned to do with everyone in the car on that evening, if he was just outside of it talking to them. They needed Pedro to be inside of it. Police in The Bronx are full of tricks like this.
Claiming that they thought they smelled the faint hint of marijuana, police now ordered Pedro and the other guys out of the vehicle and handcuffed them all, rounded them up, and took them to the 42nd Precinct, without informing any of them why they were being arrested.
Without an attorney or his mother present, Sgt. Barnett asked Pedro, “Why are all of the passengers saying the gun we found in the car was yours?” Pedro had no idea what he was stepping into at the time, but the question from Sgt. Barnett was NYPD 101. Of course, none of the passengers said any gun in the car belonged to Pedro, but perhaps Pedro would name someone else if he thought they had named him. “I was never even in the vehicle until the police told me I had to get in it. I have no idea what you are talking about.”
Life would never be the same for Pedro Hernandez again. That next morning, from the 42nd Precinct, he was taken to Horizon Juvenile Center. A few hours later he was taken to Family Court. A few hours later he was taken to another temporary detention center. Yet a few more hours later he was taken to New Bridge Non-Secure Detention Center. It’s not what you think. It’s a house in a neighborhood in the middle of The Bronx except it has officers who guard it and the house has bars on the windows. The 16 days Pedro stayed at New Bridge were the beginning of the end of his childhood.
On January 5th, 2015, something horrible happened to Pedro at this facility. At 12:15AM, with no provocation, Officer Gregory Hyman forced Pedro out of bed, shoved him out of his room, and into an empty room in the house and began brutally beating him. One punch from Hyman to Pedro’s face was so forceful that it caused Pedro to hit his head on a scorching hot radiator, also injuring his hands and neck as well. Not once did Pedro return force, but Hyman continued the brutal beating. When another child in the facility saw and heard the beating, he attempted to barge in to save Pedro, but other officers blocked the door. The child continued to try to get in there to stop it, but couldn’t, as Pedro screamed for help. Hyman then proceeded to choke Pedro.
Here’s the video, released in full for the first time. It’s painful to watch.
The Director of New Bridge, who was not in the house at the time of the incident, but saw it on camera, immediately fired Gregory Hyman for the assault, notified police and Pedro’s mother, and immediately had Pedro transferred out of her facility. Over the next 24 hours, Pedro was then bounced back to Horizon Detention Center, then Family Court, then Bronx Hope School, then New View Detention Center — where he was denied proper medical care at each place, before finally being transferred to Lutheran Detention Center.
But here’s what’s wild. The Bronx DA’s Office had the video of Pedro being brutally assaulted for 20 months and did nothing about it until private investigator Manuel Gomez obtained the video and sent it to local reporter James Ford, of New York television station, Pix 11. A full 20 months after a grown man assaulted a child in the dark of the night, Gregory Hyman was finally arrested and charged with with assault, endangering the welfare of a child, criminal obstruction of breathing and blood circulation, and harassment.
From this point forward, having already trapped Pedro inside of the criminal justice system, the NYPD and the Bronx DA’s Office began a series of flagrant, illegal arrests of Pedro Hernandez — threatening and forcing false witnesses with prosecution and even violence if they did not identify Pedro in crimes he absolutely did not commit.
What follows is the detailed history of those false arrests and the evidence, including affidavits and videos from witnesses who openly state that Detective David Terrell, Detective Daniel Brady, and Assistant District Attorney David Slott wantonly and flagrantly demanded that they identify Pedro in crimes he didn’t commit — or suffer severe consequences. It’s a lot of information that took me over a month to sort through and understand. Here, I’ll try to do it as clearly and methodically as I can.
On July 12th, 2015, a 15 year old boy named Tyrese Revels was shot in the calf. Pedro didn’t shoot him. Pedro didn’t even know Tyrese Revels and Tyrese Revels did not know Pedro. Consequently, not a single shred of physical evidence existed showing that Pedro had anything at all to do with this shooting. Nothing. It didn’t matter. And you will soon see — evidence, truth, lies, guilt, innocence — none of it matters to the detectives in the 42nd Precinct or the prosecutors in the Bronx DA’s office. They are just out to get arrests and convictions and are fully willing to railroad anyone to get them. I’m sure that sounds harsh, but evidence will prove that is the case.
Remember, Tyrese Revels is not only a kid, but he’s a kid who has been shot. With no concern for his well-being, Detectives Terrell and Brady, alongside Assistant District Attorney David Slott, begin demanding that Tyrese identify Pedro as his shooter.
Here’s Tyrese, the shooting victim, in his own words, on being pressured to falsely identify Pedro:
In another interview, Tyrese Revels details how Detective David Terrell threatened him with physical violence if he didn’t lie and say he saw Pedro shoot him.
Even though police knew full well where 15-year-old Pedro Hernandez lived, they released his photo to every single news station in the city as their lead suspect in the shooting of Tyrese Revels. The photo came from Pedro’s Facebook page. Sure enough, the news media ran with it. On July 13th, 2015 New York’s News 12 showed Pedro’s photo as an important suspect in a shooting. From morning until night they showed his image with a message that the NYPD needed help locating him. He was literally sitting at home the whole time. That’s the web version of it above.
Pedro’s mother, Jessica, seeing this on the web and on the news, then called the 42nd Precinct to inform them that she would be bringing Pedro in for questioning the next day. When Jessica brought him in, instead of simply questioning him, the police arrested Pedro right there on the spot and charged him with the crimes of attempted murder in the second degree; assault in the first degree; criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree; assault in the second degree; reckless endangerment in the first degree; assault in the third degree; reckless endangerment in the second degree; criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree; and harassment in the second degree. They didn’t bother taking it before a grand jury. It would’ve never held up — they had no evidence.
Now, I just need us to stop right there. Let’s not get too deep. I just need you to imagine what it would feel like if you got arrested and charged with 9 crimes, most of them serious felonies — including attempted murder — when you didn’t commit a single one of them. Imagine what that would do to you emotionally, physically, and financially. Imagine what it would do to your family. Now imagine it happening to you when you were 15. Now imagine it happening to you when you were 15 and you had already been brutally beaten by a guard while locked up previously. Because that’s exactly where Pedro and his family were emotionally. To them, this wasn’t a news story, or a headline, or a trending topic, their entire lives were turned upside down. They wondered if Pedro might end up getting sent to prison for decades for some foolishness that he didn’t even know anything about.
First the police sent Pedro to central booking. Next, they sent him over to Horizon Juvenile Center for six days, before he was finally released on his own recognizance, but the charges remained.
From his release in July until February of 2016, Pedro and his family attended five different court hearings on the attempted murder charge — wondering each time if police might lock him back up. Then, without even a small explanation or apology, all charges were simply dropped against Pedro on February 29th, 2016.
Andrea: Click the link for the videos and the rest of the article.