MORRISANIA, The Bronx — It’s a bad sight in any case when people shoot craps on your street; but when one of those people is a cop, it’s another, far worse thing entirely.
Eyewitnesses captured this happening on video in the streets of the Bronx. The circumstances under which it happened may indicate a much larger pattern of abuse by the officer who PIX11 News has learned, was recently promoted to the rank of detective in the NYPD.
The video would seem unbelievable, except that it’s quite real.
“If you ace out right now, you gotta let him go,” say the young men on the sidewalk to uniformed officer in the video, who’s been identified by witnesses as Detective David Terrell.
In the video, he blows on the dice for good luck, and throws them. He throws a second time as well, but before doing so, kisses the dice. It’s clearly not his first time playing. His service weapon is also in clear view as well while he plays an illegal game, allegedly with minors.
Their taunt, “If you ace out right now, you gotta let him go” refers to the person in the back seat of Terrell’s police cruiser, which is visible in the video about 20 feet behind the policeman. He and the young men in the craps game are gambling over the prisoner’s fate.
It’s not clear that the person under arrest went free. At the same time, based on Terrell’s reputation, it’s hard to know whether the community is better off or not with the suspect in custody.
“This detective is giving every good cop a bad name,” said private investigator Manuel Gomez. He’d been given the video by one of many people in this neighborhood who are concerned about Detective Terrell’s harassment of them.
“He’s making the police department look horrible,” Gomez continued. “There’s a lot of good cops out there.”
Gomez is himself a former NYPD officer and a combat veteran intelligence officer in the U.S. Army.
Gomez pointed out that Terrell’s reputation for harassment directly affected this story.
While PIX11 News was interviewing Gomez, a siren went off in an unmarked police sedan.
“That’s him!” Gomez exclaimed, as the black car drove past.
Private detective Gomez and NYPD Detective Terrell are not strangers to each other.
There are 12 lawsuits pending against Terrell related to wrongful arrests for a variety of crimes, including homicide and attempted homicide. Eleven of those lawsuits are being handled by Gomez, and most of those involve plaintiffs’ lawyer John Scola.