EDGE OF MADNESS
Jersey cops lure two-bit Bronx dealer to fatal meet at Palisades cliff
The Honda Accord pulled onto the dead-end road in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge just before 9 p.m.
The car curled around a grassy slope and emerged into a pitch-black parking lot perched atop a cliff in Fort Lee, N.J.
The location was unfamiliar to the three Bronxites inside the Honda — Denian Melo, 21, his girlfriend Jamila Roque, 22, and his brother Brandon Melo, 22, who was at the wheel.
They were there for a drug deal.
Denian, a small-time dealer, was directed to the site by someone he never met who wanted to buy cocaine.
By the time Brandon eased the car to a stop, they all felt uneasy. Something wasn't right about the isolated location surrounded by woods.
“It just felt fishy,” Brandon recalled.
They had no time to react to what happened next: An unmarked Crown Victoria, lights flashing and sirens blaring, zoomed up to their car and two cops stepped out.
This wasn't a drug deal; it was a drug sting.
Denian was set up by the Palisades Interstate Parkway Police Department, whose main function is to patrol an 11-mile highway.
But the operation didn't go as planned.
Denian was supposed to leave the scene in handcuffs. Instead, he was removed in a body bag.
While being questioned by the cops, he sprinted off into the unfamiliar woods. With the officers in close pursuit, he fell off the cliff and plumDenian's meted to his death. demise was among the incidents that sparked a sweeping investigation of the Parkway Police Department.
Bergen County prosecutors released a blistering report last month accusing the department of rampant misconduct and painting a picture of a police force gone rogue.
The investigators determined that the Palisades officers had no business luring small-time dealers like Denian into their jurisdiction to make drug arrests.
Police experts contacted by the Daily News were shocked to hear the circumstances of Denian's death.
“If you took the most skilled sting teams in the country, they would have very sophisticated ways to plan and execute these events,” said Eugene O'Donnell, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former cop. “And here you're taking presumably the most unskilled people in the country and you're letting them run these events.
“What could go wrong?” he added sarcastically.
For Denian's family, the pain — and the questions — still linger.
“If they were going to lure him in, why do it up in that park, in that area, knowing the geography?” asked Brandon Melo.
“I'm not saying he was doing something right or he didn't deserve any punishment, but I would have much preferred him being in jail than this.”
The News relied on more
than 200 pages of records from the police and prosecutors — as well as multiple interviews with Denian’s brother and girlfriend — to piece together a full accounting of the events leading up to the young Bronx man’s death.
The night began with a text message.
At 6:06 p.m. on July 18, 2017, Denian’s iPhone lit up. “Yo u on deck,” the text read.
Translation: Do you have drugs for sale?
“Yea what’s up,” Denian replied a minute later.
The undercover cop was responding to an ad Denian had posted to Craigslist. The title was far from subtle: “Coke/blow.”
“Good quality blow deals can try before buying but must provide real solid proof of not being any law enforcement so please don’t waist (sic) my time unless you can do so,” the ad read.
The text was not the first time the Palisades police had tried to bait Denian.
In February and March, an undercover officer contacted him via text but the conversations fizzled out.
Denian suspected the buyer was a cop.
“Been up in utica mad work up here. How much for 10g,” the undercover officer texted on March 13.
“Ha ur a cop,” Denian wrote back. “I don’t sell that much to anyone first time.”
“Cop what no pig,” the undercover wrote back.
In pursuing Denian, who lived in a $600-per-month room near Co-op City, the New Jersey cops weren’t exactly angling for a big fish.
His girlfriend said he started selling small amounts of cocaine about a year earlier. He scored the drugs from sellers on Craigslist rather than major traffickers.
“It was literally to be able to pay for his room and to eat,” Jamila Roque said. “He didn’t want to bother his dad to help.”
Denian didn’t fit the image of a typical drug dealer. He was shy and private, preferring to spend the day in his room playing Playstation 4 rather than slinging drugs on a streetcorner.
“He was kind of insecure. He didn’t have a strong sense of self,” said his brother Brandon. “I feel he was probably doing this because he felt he wasn’t capable of doing anything else.”
His drug dealing had already gotten him into trouble. Denian was busted for selling cocaine to an undercover cop in Queens in December 2016.
On the night of July 18, he and his girlfriend were planning to go to the gym together.
Then came the text message.
The buyer wanted 2 grams of cocaine delivered to New Jersey “across from gwb.”
Denian quoted a price of $185 and requested he “do some in front of me” to prove he wasn’t a cop.
“Yeah I can do a bump in front of u ant (sic) no cop,” the undercover wrote back.
Denian reached out to his brother for a ride. Brandon was driving for Uber at the time.
He never turned down his younger brother’s requests for a lift even on the occasions it was to complete a drug deal.
“It was really the only time I got to hang out with him,” Brandon said. “But I should have told him no. I was enabling him.”
The buyer directed Denian to what was the Fort Lee Historic Park, a cliff-top woodland area offering majestic views of the George Washington Bridge and Hudson River.
In the darkness, the Melo brothers and Denian’s girlfriend couldn’t see anything.
Even in the moments before they rolled up on the site, Denian had doubts.
“Please don’t be a cop,” he texted the undercover from the front seat of his brother’s car.
A total of four officers were there waiting for them.
Once the unmarked car pinned in the Honda, a second police vehicle burst out of the shadows and pulled up to the bumper.
The officers ordered the three out of the car, separated them and performed body searches.
The searches yielded no drugs or other contraband.
Brandon even let them search his Honda. No drugs there, either.
But the three Bronxites gave different reasons for being at the park, fueling the cops’ suspicions.
One of the officers called Lt. Jesse Cohen, who masterminded the sting and was monitoring it from his home via portable radio.
Cohen advised the cop to call in the K-9 unit. He also said he would call the drug dealer’s number to confirm they had the right man.
Immediately, Denian’s phone lit up with an undercover law enforcement phone number.
A section of fencing runs the length of the top of the palisades cliffs inside Fort Lee Historic Park. Denian Melo fell to his death after jumping the fence near this spot.
“Listen you’re caught and I already know what’s going down,” Sgt. Greg Kimbro told Denian, according to a transcript of an audio recording of the encounter.
The pair went back and forth, with Denian at one point suggesting he actually came there to rob the buyer.
“Listen cocaine isn’t a violent crime,” the officer said. “If you turn it over, I’ll do the best I can to release you on a summons so long as your score is low.”
“You can’t just release me from here or just let me go for cooperation if I give it to you?” Denian replied.
The officer was now certain that Denian had drugs on him.
“No, I’m sorry, man,” the officer replied. “At this point I’m gonna have you sit on the curb and wait for the dog. But before that, I’m gonna search you again.”
Jamila looked up and locked eyes with Denian.
He appeared to smirk. Then he took off in a dead sprint.
Three officers gave chase. Denian looped around the parking lot before disappearing into the woods.
The officers later told investigators they tried to warn the fleeing drug suspect that he was approaching a cliff.
“I actually cursed. I said, ‘You f----- idiot, there’s a cliff over there. Stop,’” Officer David Moscaritolo told prosecutors. “He continues, doesn’t even look back at us, just continues running full speed.”
The officers saw Denian step over a waist-high wire fence. He then stumbled down the slope, hit a bush and tumbled off the cliff’s edge.
“I just saw his feet dropping below the edge of the cliff,” Moscaritolo said later.
The officers didn’t immediately go searching for Denian. Instead, they returned to the parking lot.
The New Jersey cops contacted the NYPD and the Port
Authority to assist in the search for Denian.
Soon a police helicopter was flying overhead, marine units were motoring to the water’s edge and Port Authority cops were rappelling down the face of the cliff.
But no one saw any sign of him. After roughly two hours, the search was called off and the Palisades cops resumed normal patrols.
Brandon and Jamila, meanwhile, were let go free of charges. They returned to the Bronx unaware of Denian’s fate.
At roughly 6 that morning, two officers found his body lying on the side of the Henry Hudson Drive, at the foot of the cliffs.
Denian’s red T-shirt was torn and stained with blood. His gray sweatpants were down around his ankles.
He had a laceration along the left side of his hairline, marks on his right shoulder and scrapes on his right forearm and elbow.
An autopsy ruled that Denian died of blunt force trauma to the head, neck and chest.
He had no drugs in his system. But the medical examiners found three tiny baggies of cocaine, rolled up in tissues, inside his underwear.
None of the officers involved in the botched bust were disciplined.
But four months later, the 28-member force was placed under the command of a monitor installed by Bergen County prosecutors.
In interviews, the cops involved in the drug sting admitted there was no “operational plan.”
“There was just a briefing,” Officer Michael Holland told investigators.
The damning report from prosecutors, released in July, found that the department regularly engaged in dangerous high-speed chases, rewarded officers with the most tickets and arrests, and failed to properly investigate allegations of officer misconduct.
The report noted that Palisades officers hit speeds of more than 130 miles per hour while chasing a 33-year motorcycle rider from East Harlem in May 2017. The biker, Marlon Quiros, crashed and died during the high-speed police pursuit.
The department’s reputation reached a new low three weeks ago when Parkway Police Chief Michael Coppola was busted for trying to buy cocaine over the internet and having it sent to his post office box. He resigned his post on Aug. 15
The Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office declined to answer a list of questions, including whether all of the cocaine seized in drug busts was accounted for.
“Given that these are ongoing investigations and prosecutions, as well as our continued monitoring of the PIPPD (Palisades Interstate Parkway Police Department), unfortunately I cannot provide any information,” said spokeswoman Elizabeth Rebein.
The police department, which guards the Palisades Parkway from the George Washington Bridge north to the New York state line, did not return a request for comment.
Standing at the site of the botched bust, Denian’s father said he still feels guilty for not steering his son away from drug dealing.
“I’m the father,” said Francisco Melo, his lips trembling. “He made a mistake but he he was not supposed to die that day like that.”