No criminal charges for officers who fatally shot Cambria Heights teen, AG says
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Matthew Felix of Cambria Heights was shot and killed by Nassau County Police officers in February 2020. Photo courtesy of Felix family
By Jacob Kaye
State Attorney General Letitia James announced Friday that her office will not bring criminal charges against the Nassau County police officers who shot and killed 19-year-old Matthew Felix in Cambria Heights last year.
James was tasked with investigating the February shooting by Governor Andrew Cuomo early last year after the Long Island officers fired 13 shots at the Queens teen, who they believed to be the suspect in a gunpoint car robbery.
The attorney general declined to bring charges against the officers – specifically Police Officer Alejandro Perez, who fired the fatal shot – after her investigations found that the officers were justified in using deadly force, a report of the investigation said.
“The OAG has determined that pursuing criminal charges against PO Perez for his use of deadly physical force could not – as the legal standard requires – be proven unjustified beyond a reasonable doubt,” the report reads. “Specifically, the OAG cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that PO Perez’s perception of the risk that Mr. Felix posed to PO Lang and nearby pedestrians was objectively unreasonable – particularly in light of the video evidence that corroborates his account.”
On Feb. 25, 2020, the Nassau County Police Department received a call about a car robbery. According to the caller, a man had met him to test drive a Mercedes Benz for sale in Long Island, pulled out a gun and stole the car.
A laptop left inside the car led police to Felix’s home, where several NCPD officers began a stake out, according to the report. Felix, who matched the description given by the robbery victim, left the house located near 221st Street and 116th Avenue and got into his family car. Police officers were unable to identify him when he left the house, according to the report.
Following him for several blocks, police officers said they were able to make a positive identification and attempted to pull Felix over, according to the police. With several unmarked police cars flashing their lights behind him, Felix pulled over near Linden Boulevard and 217th Street. Police surrounded the Felix family car and told the teen to show his hands, according to the report.
Felix then reversed his car and bumped into the police car behind him in an alleged attempt to flee the scene, the report said. Video surveillance of the incident shows the police car rocking back and forth but does not show Felix’s car hitting the vehicle.
Police later told the attorney general’s office that Felix was seen reaching for the car’s center console as he was backing up and, believing that he was reaching for a gun, the officers opened fire.
Felix drove forward and turned onto the sidewalk, running into a beauty salon, as police officers fired over a dozen shots at the moving car, a practice that goes against departmental policy. Felix was hit three times and was killed at the scene.
A firearm was later found inside the car’s console, according to the report.
The attorney general found that due to the circumstances – including Felix’s past criminal record and testimony from the police saying that they felt they, as well as nearby pedestrians, were in danger – justified the shooting.
Michael Seinfeld, the attorney representing the Felix family, said the report failed to find all the facts.
“[The report took] an awful long time to do a shoddy job,” Seinfeld said. “I'm a little suspicious at this point.”
Video surveillance, taken from outside a nearby business, shows two men standing on the sidewalk south of where Felix pulled his car over. Their eyewitness testimony does not appear in the report, something Seinfeld said is needed.
“I don't see what effort, if any, was made to locate them and speak to them,” the attorney said. “It would be really nice to have a non-police officer witness describing what it was they saw from the sidewalk at the time of shooting.”
The only civilian witness account included in the report came from a man sitting in a parked car nearby. Though he couldn’t see the incident, he told the AG that he heard tires screeching before he heard any gunshots fired, the report reads.
Civilian accounts weren’t the only thing missing in the report. The officers involved in the shooting were not wearing body cameras to capture the incident. James recommended the department utilize the camera program in her report.
“A surveillance camera located at the scene of this incident, fortuitously captured much of what transpired during the incident,” James said. “If those cameras had not been present, there would have been no way to independently establish the actions taken by Mr. Felix or the involved police officers, because the NCPD does not currently employ a body-worn camera (“BWC”) or dashboard camera (“DBC”) program.”
“The OAG previously recommended that the NCPD adopt a BWC program, and we take this opportunity to do so again,” she added. “Additionally, equipping NCPD vehicles with DBCs would provide an even greater level of transparency and we recommend this as well.”
Despite the attorney general’s decision not to pursue criminal charges against the officers, Seinfeld said he would press forward with a civil suit against the NCPD.
“I expect we’ll find out that the police officers used excessive or unnecessary force,” Seinfeld said. “Police don't have the right to execute.”
