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Statement of Rosa Diaz, regarding the arson of the 99th Brooklyn Police Precinct. Original statement given 31stOctober 2023 to Dustin Henderson, Head of The Jane Centre, at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Audio Recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London, 7th June 2024.
Statement Begins:
I’m not sure why I’m even talking to you to be honest. No one else has believed me yet. Not even my own lawyer. So, I’m not sure why you would. I haven’t even heard of this ‘Jane Centre’ before. But you said you’re willing to listen to me and not ask too many questions, which is more than what the police, the lawyers, the reporters and the psychiatrists are all doing. So, might as well.I suppose it all starts with the Halloween Heists. Maybe that’s just another reason why I’m willing to talk to you. It is Halloween today after all. Seems fitting. It was a stupid joke that Jake – that Jake Peralta – began nearly a decade… actually, it’s exactly ten years ago today now. He was an idiot was Jake. Damn good cop, but an absolute idiot. We had recently got a new Captain – Raymond Holt – and he was determined to wind him up as much as he possibly could. Like a toddler pulling pigtails. Basically, Jake made a bet with Holt that he won, so next year Holt plotted revenge and won that one, and then the next year they had a standoff and Amy won… and the rest is history I suppose.
I won three times in one go just so you know.Anyway, it was fun and it continued even after Jake and I left the force, and Holt and Amy – sorry, that’s Chief Amy Santiago – moved into the command structure to work on the equality and anti-corruption. That was in 2021. Amy’s also Jake’s wife, I suppose I should say that for the record. And Holt will be listed in all the reports as Deputy Commissioner.So, 2022 comes around and, of course, we all showed up and paired off and it was all good fun at first. I mean sure, Terry – that Lieutenant Terrence Jeffords – completely lost control of the rookies; Hitchcock – Detective Michael Hitchcock – completely destroyed the women’s bathroom; and Charles – Detective Charles Boyle – did spend about five hours on his way to Pennsylvania in the back of a trailer. But it’s not the worst crap we’ve ever done to each other. In fact, I managed to form a rather good alliance with Jake without a single backstab for 48 hours, which is probably some sort of record. His partnership with Amy the year before doesn’t account since they’re married.But it was towards the end when it happened. Charles had managed to hide the trophy in this old restaurant, but it was right on top of these really shitty cupboards. I was keeping watch, so Jake went up to get the trophy and he… I’m not sure if he slipped or the shelf broke or what happened, but he fell. I didn’t see it how. But by the time I got back to the kitchen, Jake was screaming and lashing out all over the floor, covered in roaches. Normally, that would be really, really funny. But there was something like… I don’t know… something really nasty about those things. The way they scuttled all over him, crawling into his mouth, up his nose, climbing into his clothes… it was like they were attacking him. And they stank! Worse than rot. I’ve smelt a lot of shitty things as a cop. Dead bodies, backed up sewage, rotting food left for a month and set into the walls. We once had an apartment where the body had been left for a week in a boiling apartment with a hover spreading the blood all over the floor. We had to keep the air con off to preserve the crime scene for three or six months. That was nasty. This was… evil. Rot and death and disease. You know when you’ve been locked in an apartment with the flu and there’s the unwashed dishes cause you just don’t feel like it, the sweat in the blankets and clothes and the sickness that just sinks into the walls. That too… but, magnified.I pulled Jake out of there as quickly as possible, but they still just… they didn’t fall off when I batted at them or swatted at them. If anything they became more aggressive, then started jumping all over me. Their legs, when they touched my skin… I don’t mind bugs. I can deal with that crap. Have done hundreds of times. You don’t get detective in Brooklyn by being squeamish about dumpster driving and sewage. But they’re legs… their legs hurt. Like small razors biting into my skin. Deep. They tore and scratched… and I just had a few of them on me. They were all over Jake. He would whine like a little baby all the time, but his screams were… I’ve never heard him scream like that.I don’t really remember what I was thinking when I grabbed that old fire extinguisher. I was beginning to panic myself. Nothing else worked though and short of shooting the things off him, I didn’t know what else to do. But it worked. The moment the gas hit them they shrivelled in their little, black skeletons and cascaded off him onto the floor. Those shrunken little shits thunked hard. Like hail off a skylight. When I got most of them off Jake, he grabbed the extinguisher off me and gassed me too. Which was actually… kind of good. In a weird way. The gas made me light-headed and really dulled the worst of the pain.We kept going until they were all dead. Just stood there afterwards like a pair of idiots. We stank and were sore and really creeped out. Eventually though, Jake made a joke about something or other and we left that place as quickly as possible. With the Sword of Triumph of course. Then I locked him in the boot of his car and rode to Shaws to take my title. I do still feel bad about that. But I left him there with oxygen.The next month or so was the last normal few weeks we had. I was due to meet up with the old squad again at Christmas, but Amy invited me round for drinks and pay homage to her kids. She mentioned at the start of December they had been getting some weird hang-up calls. They had started screening, she said, but it wasn’t doing anything. They tried tracing them too, but nothing. I asked her if I could help, but she said no. She did say something really strange though. Said there was no voice on the other end. No heavy breathing. No threats or groans. Just static. Like the line was out of signal or interference. I tried to help her anyway, but it was like she said. No trace on the calls.That was the first weird thing that happened. The second was the bugs in the precinct. Just after New Year. At least they let us have Christmas, eh? Or maybe they didn’t and they were always there. Building up. Maybe people were just swatting them and not even thinking about it until they started getting out of hand. People usually don’t. They’re complacent like that. Even cops.Especially cops.When I went in to get some details for a case in January, Terry said they had been building up for a couple of weeks. Mean Marge had started putting down poison, but they just kept on multiplying. He said he was arranging to have the building fumigated. It was scheduled for February. Didn’t do anything though. Just got worse. And Amy and Jake were getting more and more freaked out by those phone calls. Then, one night in April, Jake called me in the middle of the night. Panicked. Completely freaked out. It scared me enough to drag me away from this stake-out I was on, which got me in real trouble with my boss. I was kind of furious with Jake for a moment, but when I got to the house…Thing is you need to know is Jake never admitted he was scared. Ever. I can count it on one hand. He would get uncomfortable and awkward and just bluster and make shit jokes. Point is, when I opened the door that night… I have never seen him like that before. Not even when we were sentenced to prison – whole other story – and he was white as bone. His eyes were bugging out and he was shaking. Shaking so hard. Amy was behind him holding Issy and Mac – he’d woken them up when he screamed and they were crying. I got Jake to sit down and told Amy she could sort out the kids. When the kids were in bed and I’d plied Jake with five or six shots of tequila, I finally learned what happened.The phone had rung again and since Jake had been up changing Issy’s diaper, he’d answered it. But this time it wasn’t static. Well, it was never static. The line was finally clear enough for him to hear what had always been there. It was them.The bugs.He swore to me. Swore up and down it was those same horrible bastards that swarmed us in that old restaurant. I didn’t believe him at first. Or didn’t want to. But then he played me the recording – they had been recording the calls in case something changed – and… and it was them. I could almost smell them again. The rot and disease. Feel them tearing into my skin. The noise it was… it’s hard to describe. I could hear every angry tick over the phone line. Hissing and spitting with anger.
I slammed the phone straight back down. I stayed with them for the rest of the night. We didn’t sleep. The next morning, Amy’s brother, David, came to get the kids.
And it just kept getting worse.I was spending a lot of time at the 99. Far more than my boss liked. But I couldn’t ignore it. The infestation swelled and infected everywhere. Roaches and bugs scuttling out of every crack, every vent. They choked the air con. The precinct stank. And so cold, cause the windows and door to the roof needed to be kept open all the time. Heating didn’t work, because the bugs ate through the piping. And the plumbing. Bathrooms flooded and the bugs piled out of the drains. So, add waste to that rot and disease… and, yeah… you know. Then they started on the computer cables. Wifi and systems failed constantly. We just about kept on top of processing people. Then people kept on getting sick. Not just the officers and admin, but the perps we brought in. Their lawyers. Prosecutors. Higher ups refused to come down. It was a mess.Terry did everything he could. He was on the phone, night and day, trying to get people to help. He got in fumigators from all over the city. He tried to get his people transferred or at least some mobile units so they could work from the street. But everything fell through or... was mysteriously waylaid. One of the mobile units that came was full of mould. Another all the equipment was broken. One fell off the back of a truck during transport. Precincts developed their own problems and couldn’t accommodate. Charles was very understanding about it. Holt thought it might have something to do with all our enemies over the years.I knew it wasn’t that though. It was them.I don’t know how they were doing it.But it was them.Then May 5th rolled around and that was when they pounced. I was there. So was Jake and Amy and Holt. Or rather, we were outside when it first started. We were waiting for Charles to join us for lunch. He was going to take us to this weird pie place where they had livers and kidneys and shit – he loved that kind of crap. But Jake swore it was actually decent so we thought – hey, it’s better than roaches in our lunches. We were waiting outside, batting away forty, flies reeking of mould and then, all a sudden, Amy was shoving Jake out of the way screaming, before the computer console exploded on the pavement. Glass rained everywhere. We were lucky none of us got slashed with glass or the plastic shards.We didn’t speak for a moment. Just stared at it. Then we heard Charles screaming upstairs. We looked up and Jake cried out. He was trying to climb out the window and he was… covered doesn’t seem adequate. We only knew it was him, because we recognised his screams. They smothered every inch of him, in layers, distorting his form. He hardly looked like a human shape, crawling out of some black cave, clawing at the air. We tried to yell for him to stop, but he… he just stepped out over the ledge, trying to escape the hell inside, and he… he fell.I… I don’t usually freeze. I got over that kid of panic shit in training. But Charles… God… he fell so, so slowly. At first my stupid brain thought he was floating. Weird right? … Shit... Then his body rolled and… and twisted and he pitched forward. It took me a moment to realise he was getting closer and closer to me. I didn’t hear Holt and Amy yelling at me to get out of the way. Holt just grabbed me and pulled. Amy had to hold Jake back.I don’t really remember him hitting the ground. Maybe I closed my eyes, but one second, he was still falling, the next bugs were swarming everywhere, raging like a tornado. One moment it was calm and still and then they were everywhere whipping a storm. Biting at out eyes, our hair, our skin… and beating, beating down. And Charles’ broken body was at the centre of it. Those bugs that consumed him, hadn’t cushioned his fall and he’d gone front first. His head… his head had exploded. Neck… crumpled into his back, arms and legs twisted everywhere.The fall couldn’t have done all of that.I don’t know if we would have run in if Jake hadn’t broken free of Amy and charged inside screaming. Maybe tried to get his body someplace safe. Call for backup. Try to evacuate the street. But the moment he ran inside, there was no way we weren’t gonna follow him. I was wearing a scarf so I at least was able to pull something over my face before we ran in, but Jake, Amy and Holt ran in with no protection. I’m amazed they made it up the stairs.We tried to get people out, but they were stuck or swarmed or thrashing too much to drag properly. Lou was trapped underneath his desk, blood pooling around him. I heard… I think it was Sweikow, trying to get some of the probies out, but I can’t be sure it was him.
I got Deatmore toward the door, but when I rolled him back down the stairs, the bugs burst off him and he was… his face was gone. I only knew it was him, because I saw the badge. He was useless, but… no, no he was good cop. And he did so much community engagement and bias awareness. He wanted to be a great cop.I knew I needed to get Holt, Jake and Amy out before they were swarmed too. It was too late for the people in there, but I could still save them. They were clinging and biting at me, but they weren’t swarming. Yet. I don’t know why.I ran up to the fourth floor. I knew that’s where they would be. I passed Holt on the stairs. He was also trying to get someone out. I think it was Savant. He was screaming for his mother. I told Holt to leave him, he was already dead, but Holt refused and just kept trying. I tried to tell him what happened to Deatmore, but he wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t. I tried, but then………Shit.…He fell… backwards… down the stairs. Both of them. Screaming. Holt landed at the bottom. Savant on top of him. I almost ran down to them. He was my Captain. I had to help… but, you know that part of your brain that rips hand off the hot pan when its boiling. It froze me. Stopped me. And the second I did, like they knew it couldn’t get me too then, they went for him. Roaches – bloody and black – poured off Savant and onto Holt. It didn’t get any thinner around the kid or in the air. Maybe they multiplied. But they drowned Holt, filling his mouth and eyes and ears… but he was still screaming. For Kevin.I need to tell Kevin, Holt was thinking of him at the end.I didn’t stop. I knew I couldn’t stop. I ran up the rest of the stairs. If Holt had been taken, Jake and Amy and I didn’t have long. We needed to get out of there. When I was almost at the top of the stairs, Hitchcock and Scully – Detective Norm Scully… Christ – I had to dodge out of the way when they fell down the stairs together. Trying to grab for each other.I couldn’t help them.I tried calling out for Jake, for Amy, but I don’t think they could have heard me over the din. I kept trying though. Kept fumbling through the darkness, through the roaches tearing at my skin, ripping into me… I kept pushing and scrambling around. I think I heard gunshots from some idiot trying to fight bugs with bullets, but… hey, they don’t solve everything. No matter how hard people try. I just hoped they didn’t hit me.Then I tripped over someone. I don’t know who it was. But when I fell forward, I felt onto Jake’s back. He grabbed me so tight and screamed for Amy… he thought he had her. The terror when he saw my face… I don’t blame him. He wanted his wife. I asked him: ‘Where’s Amy?’ He said he lost her.I knew he wouldn’t leave without her, but I… I didn’t know how long we had. I told him what happened to Holt, but he didn’t listen. I figured I could hit him on the head and drag him out if he refused to follow me in a minute. But I had to help him look.We tried… we managed to fight our way through the bullpen to the Captain’s office. We thought she might have gone for Terry. But when we got there, there was no one there. We should have figured. The moment there was a crisis, Terry would have run out into the bullpen. Nothing there. I managed to convince Jake that Amy might be downstairs where the uniforms are. She managed them as a Sergeant. They were her people. It made sense. And it would be easier to drag Jake down one flight not three.We got back down, but by the time we did, there was no hope of finding anyone. We could hear the screams, but everything was so thick with roaches and flies and… maggots and worms squelching under out feet. We couldn’t see anyone. Couldn’t even feel for anyone or anything. And the stench was thick and putrid. Like swallowing sewage water. We could barely breathe. I could barely even hear Jake’s cries for Amy and he was standing right next to me with a death grip on my hand.I was just about to knock him out when I heard the building creak and crack. Lights and vents began to fall from the ceiling. Crashing around us. The bugs fled from the collapses and offered us some peek through the dark. That’s when we saw her. Amy. She was holding someone up, trying to bat bugs from their face. I remember her last words, she screamed. ‘Jake. Thank God. Help. Gary can’t move on his own.” We were about to run and get her when the ceiling collapsed. Could see just enough to know when it came down it crushed her and Gary instantly.Jake’s scream was inhuman.I think the only reason I didn’t lose him was because I didn’t let go of his hand. He tried to wrench free of me, but I kept hold tight. Tight. Latched on with my other hand and dug my nails in. I don’t think he could hear me, but maybe the pain got to him. I just dragged him back. Hard as I could. I don’t know where I was pulling him to, but I knew I couldn’t let him fall into that hole where Amy and Gay had gone and which the bugs were now swarming.When he wasn’t fighting me anymore, I tried to pull to where I thought the door was. Tried to feel around for it. But, the darkness. It was midday it May and the sky was clear and yet I could barely see anything. Couldn’t remember the way out of the building I’d worked in for years. Every step was a battle through an army of vicious disease and rot and the only thing keeping me going was Jake’s hand in mine.We pushed and pushed through and eventually… I don’t know, we found a door. It didn’t have drop bars, just a handle, so I knew it wasn’t a door that led outside, but… I was desperate for anything. I pushed and it didn’t move, and I kept on trying, then Jake reached forward and pulled and we dived…And we made it through to an empty room.It wasn’t clean of rot or disease or the noise, but it was muted now. Like in that musty, mouldy corner of the 99thPrecinct we could actually breathe. There were some roach carcasses scattered about, but there was nothing in there. Once I wasn’t gagging anymore, I heard Jake say what it was.‘It’s the propane,’ he said. ‘It’s leaking.’I looked up and saw it too. Almost every single pipe at the roof of the ceiling was eaten through. I mean, eaten. They weren’t cracked. There bite marks and scratches. Those little bastards must have eaten through every pipe in the place, but when the CO2 or propane or methane or maybe both broke, they just dropped. Found the source of the heating problems at least.
I thought we might just take a minute to get straight before going back outside, but I could barely stand. The gas, the smell, the ache of just pushing through all those bastards dragged on my body. My shirt and hair were soaked with blood from the bites. Jake wasn’t much better. I didn’t see exactly what happened – my vision started to blur – but Jake pushed me back. Kept pushing me. I tried to fight back, but my hands wouldn’t work. They slipped off his arms. I was able to ask ‘Jake, man, what the hell are you doing?’‘Making sure one of us lives,’ he said. I didn’t get a chance to ask him what he meant.He shoved me into a corner and dragged himself up. Opened the freezer they found me. I didn’t even see it. Apparently, it’s been there for years. Someone brought it in for evidence in a murder decades ago and when it was no longer needed they tried to take it to a skip, but the transport never showed. So, they just it in here after a while. Out of the way. Police efficiency, hey?It was that second I had between being shoved inside and the door closing, my vision cleared. Just for a bare second. A fraction. And I saw Jake’s face, dripping with blood and tears and white as snow. His eyes were bigger than I’ve ever seen. When he spoke, I swore… a live roach fell out of his mouth, covered in blood. It shrivelled and fell as it crawled across his face.Then he said. ‘Tell and Max and Issy, their mom and I went down in a blaze of glory. Like heroes.’And he slammed the door closed and used Amy’s lighter.I woke up in hospital. Could barely move for the gauze and bandages. You can see the burns and scars, from what they did. Didn’t matter anyway though, cause the handcuffs were strapping me to the bed. My lawyer’s puppy dog aide was sleeping at the end of my bed and immediately got on the phone when I woke them up. Then I had more lawyers and police and doctors swarming around me and throwing question after question.To be honest, sometimes I thought they were worse than the bugs. I still can’t catch of whiff of that horrid chemical stench without wanting to puke.The worse part though was when they charged me with arson of the Brooklyn 99th Police precinct and the murder of almost forty cops, seven lawyers and twenty-two civilians. My friends. I told them what happened. I even dumbed it down and left out as much of the weird supernatural bug shit as I could. Just kept it to the infestation in the precinct. But they wouldn’t believe me! The nice ones thought I was crazy! Everyone thought I had a grudge against cops or had a falling out with my friends or wanted revenge over some weird bisexual love tryst! It was so fucking demeaning!And then I found out the evidence. I thought they were mad going on and on about the arson and calling me crazy for saying the bugs all in my head, but there was nothing. Nothing. At all. I mean I know fire just eradicated bugs, but those things were all over the precinct. I’ve been on arson sites before where there was a huge wasp nest in the attic. Most of it burned away, but there was enough debris left behind to figure out what had once been there. There was nothing. The bodies of my former co-workers were broken and scratched, but they were also burned. It was all attributed to the fire and explosion.That wasn’t just it though. I presume you have already, but if you haven’t you need to pull the police maintenance records. Terry’s requests; for transfers, for mobile units, repairs relating to the bugs, for… for help. They weren’t there. Not just in one channel. Emails, texts, online systems, logs filed to the court about contaminated evidence, complaints from lawyers about their clients sitting in unhygienic cells… none of it was there.
The security footage was just wiped since Halloween last year. It was all gone! People remembered there being insects and verbal complaints… I suppose they didn’t have the power to erase memories… but nothing as bad as what it actually was.Except me!I remember!Anyway, my trial is still ongoing. I imagine they’ll find be guilty within a day. They’ll be doing closing arguments soon. I don’t know what you plan to do with this recording, Mr Henderson, but I would appreciate it if you didn’t destroy it. There needs to be some record of what happened. Something, at least, where I get to tell the truth without being twisted up by doctors and lawyers and journalists all desperate to paint me as crazy or evil. So, thanks.Oh, and um, will you do me one favour. Can you get a message to McClane and Isabella Peralta-Santiago. They’re staying with their uncle, David Santiago. He… he hasn’t brought them to see me and has refused all requests from my lawyer for communication. Will you tell them what Jake wanted me to tell them. About their parent’s dying as heroes. They don’t need to know anything else though. I know they’re too young to really understand, but if you can just ask David to tell them. Explain to him maybe…………Yeah. I know. Long shot.God, look at the time. Sorry, I’m not usually so chatty.
Statement Ends.
This statement is the first that was sent through from The Jane Centre in Indiana. They reached out wishing for a partnership a few months ago. I was reticent at first. Given our own rigorous standards of evidence, proof and research, I was reluctant to receive materials from an institution not of the same academic rigor. But… someone reluctantly, I will admit, Mr Henderson seems to have a good instinct and maintains very high standards of investigation.It is a very interesting insight into such an incident that created such a great impact. Opinions of why Miss Diaz supposedly did what she did are almost as polarising here, as much as they are across the pond. I have had the opportunity since this statement came in to do more background into the victims of this incident. It seems Deputy Commissioner Holt and Captain Santiago were campaigners for police reform and very popular and effective ones too. Their projects were inspiring a lot of change within the New York Police Department and they were about to be expanded to sister projects in Boston and Baltimore upon their deaths. The 99th Precinct had some of the best statistics in the city, not only for arrests, but also for low complaints. Their officers were… good people, it seems. Which makes the draconian measures introduced since this incident all the more sad.The American Police Forces are, just like our own, very reluctant to share their own private files with anyone outside their organisation. Mr Henderson seems though seems to have as competent a hacker on staff as our Sasha. Or a very good charmer, like Tim. Miss Diaz was indeed correct. All the information and hardcopy evidence relating to an infestation in the 99th Precinct in the months leading up to the explosion is corrupted or non-existent. He did manage, in the aftermath of Miss Diaz’s interview to track down some people who passed through the precinct – lawyers, detainees and their families, other police passing through – and they did corroborate and increasing and unnerving increase of insectoid activity.Mr Henderson also included photographs of the former precinct. Though the damage is indeed extensive, there are, as said in the media, no evidence of insects on the level that Miss Diaz described. This is concerning. When Jane Prentiss attacked the Institute in 2016, the worms she killed were left behind for clean-up. The Corruption, I suspect, was not wholly eradicated when Mr Peralta blew up the building.Or maybe roaches work different to worms.Any follow-up interview we might wish to make is impossible. On November 5th 2023, Miss Diaz escaped from Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Not much information is available on how. It seems there was a blackout in the prison that lasted for almost exactly five minutes, during which time Miss Diaz escaped a locked cell and somehow got out. There have been some sightings from the Canadian and Mexican border, all as unlikely as the last, but nothing confirmed. She is currently one of the most wanted people in America though, so, I can’t imagine she remained in the country.All that was useful was sent in the pack, but I did have Tim call The Jane Centre back for more information on this prison blackout to see how it compares to Robert Montauk’s… violent end. Not much resulted from the call other than Tim wasting a good two hours flirting with a very charming field researcher named Emily Goldfinch. Ridiculous name. I did remind him that I did not mind him using his charms for the purposes of acquiring sensitive information, but since The Jane Centre is more than willing to share anyway, he could have waited until his off-hours to charm Miss Goldfinch. I don’t think he listened much. He seems to think she and Sasha would be good friends as well. Apparently, they’re both really Nancy Meyers films.…I should probably clean this office.……I wonder what Martin’s making for dinner.…End recording.