Protesters Sunday in Williston Park demanded the ouster of Nassau’s police commissioner and criminal charges against four county officers involved in the 2020 fatal shooting of a carjacking suspect.
About 50 demonstrators gathered outside the Nassau police department’s Third Precinct, where many said they still had concerns about the Feb. 25, 2020 fatal shooting of Matthew Felix, 19, of Queens, despite a 16-page report issued in June by state Attorney General Letitia James that found insufficient evidence to charge the officers.
“We don’t know why,” Samantha Felix said of the decision to not file charges in her brother’s death. “In the report, it was very conflicting as to why [officers] felt the need to use such excessive force.”
She criticized Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder for failing to notify the family before they learned about Matthew Felix’s death in news reports, and joined others Sunday in calling for him to be fired.
Nassau police spokesman Richard LeBrun in an email said:
“State Attorney General Letitia James Office of Special Investigations investigated the case and has concluded that the police were legally within their rights protecting themselves and that Matthew Felix’s death did not rise to the level of criminal conduct by the officers from the Nassau County Police Department.”
The attorney general’s report said Felix pulled a gun on the owner of a Mercedes-Benz, forcing him out of the car before driving off with the vehicle, which had been advertised online for sale in Garden City Park. The owner called Nassau police to report the car stolen. Police tracked Felix to his home in Cambria Heights through a tracking application in a laptop in the Mercedes.
Officers followed Felix and tried to get him to pull over after he left his home in a different car, the report said.
He rammed a police car and then accelerated in the direction of an officer. The officers fired 13 gunshots at Felix, who was struck three times and pronounced dead at the scene. Police recovered a loaded firearm in the center console of the car, the report said.
Rachel Hu, an organizer with the Party of Socialism and Liberation, Long Island, said the protest was a way to commemorate “Black August,” an annual nationwide remembrance and reminder of people imprisoned and persecuted for their work in the Black liberation movement.
“It’s a movement holiday,” said Hu, a Nassau resident who helped organize the protest. “It’s an important month of reflection for a lot of folks … of how important it is to keep fighting for justice for victims of police violence and those behind bars.”
