The New York Police Department said on Tuesday that it would release footage from the body cameras worn by officers during the shooting of a 22-year-old man in Queens last week amid growing criticism of how the city has dealt with calls tied to mental health issues.
The man, Jabez Chakraborty, was shot by the police during a chaotic interaction at his home on the morning of Jan. 26, after his family, who said he had been in a state of “emotional distress,” had called 911 for assistance. Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who visited Mr. Chakraborty in the hospital, said in a social media post on Monday that the man had “lived with schizophrenia for many years.”
The family has disputed portions of the police’s account, claiming that they called for medical help but that officers arrived instead and shot Mr. Chakraborty “multiple times right in front of us.”
According to a preliminary account by the police, when officers arrived at his home, Mr. Chakraborty took a knife from the kitchen and began to advance toward them. After Mr. Chakraborty’s family failed to restrain him and the police directed him to put the knife down, at least one of the officers fired at Mr. Chakraborty.
Emergency medical workers arrived later and brought him to a hospital, where he was taken into surgery, according to the police. The police said that day that Mr. Chakraborty had non-life-threatening injuries.
The episode has drawn swift condemnation from critics, who have questioned why the police were called to respond to an apparent mental health crisis.
But it has also put particular pressure on Mr. Mamdani, who campaigned on a promise to change how the city handled 911 calls for such crises, and now faces a growing number of cases in which the police have shot people who appear to be suffering from mental health issues.
Mr. Mamdani’s initial statements after Mr. Chakraborty’s shooting, which expressed gratitude for the work of “first responders,” drew frustration from some progressive organizers, who felt he had not sufficiently mentioned the family’s grief.
A police official who has watched the body-camera footage said on Tuesday that the officers had not drawn their weapons until Mr. Chakraborty grabbed the knife and began to advance toward them. He added that the 911 operator who had answered the family’s call had told them that such episodes typically required a response from both emergency medical workers and police officers.
But the family, in a statement released by Desis Rising Up & Moving, an organization that supports South Asian and Indo-Caribbean New Yorkers, has pushed back on that account, saying that they had not asked for the police, but rather had been seeking an ambulance “to provide medical attention” to Mr. Chakraborty.
The shooting is being investigated by the Police Department’s Force Investigation Division, the unit that handles fatal encounters between the police and members of the public. The release of the body-camera footage is standard protocol in such cases, the department said.
Maia Coleman is a reporter for The Times covering the New York Police Department and criminal justice in the New York area.
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