Two New York City police officers will face misconduct charges in the fatal shooting of a 19-year-old man who was in mental distress and had called 911 seeking help, a Police Department spokesman said.
The decision by Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch to move ahead with the departmental charges follows a decision by the Civilian Complaint Review Board, an oversight panel that last week took the rare step of overruling its own investigator to find that the officers had used excessive force during their encounter last year with the man, Win Rozario, who the police said had lunged at them with a pair of scissors.
Such charges usually lead to a departmental trial that can result in an officer’s firing, but more often results in lost vacation time.
The officers, Matthew Cianfrocco and Salvatore Alongi, responded to a call at a home in the Ozone Park neighborhood of Queens just before 2 p.m. on March 27, 2024. After a chaotic interaction that was captured by the officers’ body-worn cameras, the officers shot and killed Mr. Rozario.
After the shooting, police leaders said the officers’ actions were justified. John Chell, the department’s chief of patrol at the time, said the scene had grown “quite hectic, chaotic and dangerous right away,” and that the officers had “no choice” but to fire their Tasers at Mr. Rozario, and then their guns.
Members of Mr. Rozario’s family dispute that account, saying that his mother had restrained him during much of the encounter and had begged the officers not to shoot him.
“So they shot him with the Tasers, and my brother didn’t really go down,” Utsho Rozario, Win Rozario’s younger brother, said in an interview after the shooting. “So one of the cops pulled out a gun and shot him as my mother was still hugging him.”
In body-worn camera footage, it appears that the interaction began calmly. Utsho Rozario answered the door when the officers arrived and said that his brother was having “an episode.” The officers walked upstairs into the family’s apartment, where Win Rozario opened a kitchen drawer and took out a pair of scissors. Officer Alongi fired his Taser. Mr. Rozario fell to the ground, and his mother, Notan Ava Costa, took the scissors away.
Mr. Rozario got up and retrieved the scissors. Ms. Costa continued to restrain her son as the officers ordered her to step aside. They fired their Tasers, and Mr. Rozario charged at them with the scissors. One of the officers fired his gun. Mr. Rozario retreated into the kitchen, where he was shot four more times.
An investigator with the civilian review board found that the officers’ actions had been within the department’s training guidelines, and recommended that the family’s allegations not be substantiated. But last week, the board voted to overrule the investigator, finding that the officers had committed several acts of misconduct, including using excessive force and abusing their authority.
The departmental charges were filed on Thursday because the statute of limitations in the case was scheduled to expire next week, Dakota Gardner, a spokesman for the board, said.
“We are pleased that the N.Y.P.D. has served the charges against the two accused officers, and we are prepared to present the case as it continues through our standard process for substantiated allegations of serious misconduct,” Mr. Gardner said.
Loyda Colón, executive director of the Justice Committee, a New York activist group that opposes police violence, said the officers should be fired by the department and criminally prosecuted by Letitia James, the state attorney general.
“Anything less sends the message that N.Y.P.D. officers can kill with impunity,” Mx. Colón said, “and that families like Win’s must bear the brunt.”
The Police Benevolent Association, the union that represents the officers, released a blistering statement on Thursday in response to the charges. Patrick Hendry, the union’s president, said that some civilian review board members were “either too afraid of the anti-police extremists, or they are extremists themselves.”
“We will continue to fight back against C.C.R.B.’s sham process and expose this board’s deep-seated bias,” Mr. Hendry said.
An inquiry into the shooting by Ms. James’s office is continuing.
Christopher Maag is a reporter covering the New York City region for The Times.
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