It’s been more than a year since a gunman shot and killed Denzel Chan as he watched the West Indian Day Parade on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn.
His mother, Launette Chan, last heard from the detective assigned to his case via text message in October 2024, one of two times she says she’s been contacted by police about the shooting that killed her son and wounded four other people on Sept. 2, 2024.
With so few updates, she has little faith law enforcement will arrest the person who shot her son, even though it happened in the middle of the day as hundreds of thousands of people attended one of the city’s largest public celebrations.
“I have faith in God,” she said in a recent interview. “I know my God is a God of justice. … That’s where I’m putting my faith. It’s not in the police department.”
Denzel Chan’s case is a relative outlier in the city. The NYPD arrests a significant proportion of suspects in murder cases, boasting a homicide clearance rate much higher than those nationwide, said Elizabeth Glazer, a former federal prosecutor who previously headed the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice.
But Chan’s case is one that highlights a frustration experienced by many victims’ families. As detectives investigate homicide cases, police providing updates to victims and their families can help build trust between police and the community, said Brian Saunders, who leads a precinct community council in Crown Heights. However, he says constructive dialogue can be difficult to execute.
The loved ones of crime victims are often desperate to know where a case stands, he said.
“That’s the whole thing that’s in everyone’s head,” Saunders said. “What is going on with my family member’s case? Is it forgotten? Are you working on it? Is there any update?”
The 2024 shooting
Chan, who was 25 years old and a graduate of Sheepshead Bay High School, was killed as a massive crowd of people crammed the sidewalks on Eastern Parkway during the vibrant annual parade that celebrates West Indian culture and heritage.
Denzel Chan.
As the celebration roared at about 2:30 p.m., a man carrying a .380-caliber handgun jumped over a barricade on Eastern Parkway near Franklin Avenue, according to NYPD officials and police reports reviewed by Gothamist.
The man, who witnesses said was wearing an oil-stained, brown T-shirt and a brown bandana over his face, fired into a crowd of onlookers. Police have not released images of the shooter or publicly identified a suspect.
He shot five people, including Chan, the bullet piercing Chan’s stomach and exiting through his right side, according to police reports that were filed in a lawsuit by another person who was hurt in the shooting. Medics rushed him to a local hospital where he died, the reports said.
Two days later, Tarik Sheppard, the top police department spokesperson at the time, said in a television appearance that an arrest would be imminent as investigators were making significant progress in the case.
“I suggest the shooter turn himself in because soon we're going to be coming to get you,” Sheppard said. “You don't have much longer to be out there.”
When asked if the NYPD had surveillance footage of the shooting, Sheppard declined to answer.
A Sept. 25, 2024 NYPD police report said that a camera at the nearby intersection of Franklin Avenue and Eastern Parkway did not capture video of the shooting or a suspect. A prosecutor from the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office interviewed an eyewitness soon after the shooting, according to the report, and police recovered four .380 shell casings and a single spent round at the scene.
The report also said investigators believe the shooting is related to rival gangs in the neighborhood because one of the surviving victims — not Chan — was allegedly affiliated with a local gang.
Weeks after the shooting, the NYPD released an image of a teen and said he was wanted for the crime. But in February, a department spokesperson apologized for sharing the photo after investigators determined he was near the scene of the killing, but was not the shooter.
In the months since, police have released few more details about the shooting.
This year, as police announced a massive operation to secure the 2025 parade, the status of the case seemed to have fallen from the police commissioner’s radar. At a press conference before the parade, a reporter asked NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch if an arrest had been made in Chan’s killing. She appeared not to know off the top of her head. Tisch briefly leaned over and spoke to Chief of Department John Chell to confirm before telling the reporter police have made no arrests.
An NYPD spokesperson said the investigation is ongoing.
A balancing act
Saunders, the leader of the precinct community council where the shooting happened, said a lack of communication between the police and the families of crime victims is not uncommon.
“It’s difficult. It’s hard. There’s a lot of frustration on both sides,” Saunders said.
Violent crime is an issue in Crown Heights, but is trending downward this year. Through mid-September there were three murders in the precinct, compared to 10 in the same time period in 2024.
Since Saunders became president of the 77th Precinct Community Council in 2021, he’s had to broker relationships among families of homicide victims in Crown Heights and detectives working to solve the crimes.
He served as a go-between to improve communication between police and the family of a 17-year-old girl who was hit by a stray bullet and killed on her stoop on Eastern Parkway in 2022. He also helped create dialogue between the police and the family of a 13-year-old boy who was shot to death in the neighborhood.
“It’s not even just solving a case. … It’s about updating,” Saunders said, adding that it’s sometimes difficult because police can’t share sensitive information about an ongoing investigation.
Saunders said in one case, detectives provided regular updates to a mother whose daughter was shot in the back of her head on bustling Franklin Avenue in 2021.
The communication helped the woman as she grieved her daughter’s killing, and she came out of the experience with a stronger connection to the local precinct, Saunders said. She’s now in regular contact with Saunders and usually attends the monthly precinct community council meetings with officers who police the neighborhood, he said.
“She felt like she was in the mix,” he said.
A former homicide prosecutor in Brooklyn said if a detective is less communicative with a family, it does not mean they’re not investigating the case aggressively.
“Some detectives have a good bedside manner, but they’re not great detectives,” said Julie Rendelman, who is now a New York defense attorney.
She said detectives have to walk a fine line while investigating cases and sharing information.
“I think it’s important to communicate with the family,” she said. “I’ll be frank with you, though, a detective would be careful to tell them anything, especially if an investigation is still going on.”
Joseph Giacalone, an adjunct professor at John Jay College and the former commanding officer of the Bronx Cold Case Squad, agreed it’s a difficult balancing act.
“The No. 1 complaint has always been that there’s a lack of communication between the investigators and the family,” he said.
“When you talk to the family members, unless you have something to work on, you get them all excited only to tell them what? ‘That we don’t have anything new, have a nice day,’” he said.
“You’re not going to call up people and do that,” he said.
No answers
Chan’s father, Collin Dover, said he feels rebuffed by the police who are working to solve his son’s murder.
Dover is an immigrant from Guyana who works as a maintenance worker in the Flatbush Gardens housing development, where he shared a two-bedroom apartment with his son.
In his apartment, he keeps pairs of his son’s basketball shoes in a bedroom closet and a painting of the Last Supper on a wall overlooking his dining table.
Dover and Chan’s mother separated when their son was young, but they now share a lack of faith that law enforcement will find their son’s killer.
“It’s a year now and they don’t solve it,” Dover said.
“I just want justice for my son, or let someone come out and tell me something,” he said. “I get no answer from nobody. I’m calling the detective, he is never there, he never picks up.”
