Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on Monday that the New York Police Department had reformed how it would handle parts of its oversight after an officer was allowed to retire before facing a disciplinary trial over the death of a teenager.
Mr. Mamdani also ordered the police to conduct a review of their use-of-force policies, which were central to an oversight board’s decision to recommend excessive force charges against the officer, Salvatore Alongi, in the death of the 19-year-old Win Rozario in 2024.
“When the government uses force against a New Yorker, the standard for accountability must be at its highest,” Mr. Mamdani said in a statement. “Every New Yorker deserves to know that force will be used lawfully, carefully and only when necessary.”
The announcement on Monday came as Mr. Mamdani has faced criticism from his base for not doing enough to transform public safety — a pledge he made during his mayoral campaign.
Tensions flared further last week as the Democratic Socialists of America called on the mayor to fire Jessica S. Tisch, the police commissioner, after the shooting of a Dominican man in the Bronx by federal immigration agents. Federal officials said the man, Oscar Belgal, had a string of arrests and “indirect or direct knowledge” of a shooting that injured an off-duty customs officer in Manhattan in July 2025. Mr. Belgal accelerated when the agents approached his vehicle, they added.
The new measures, the mayor’s office said, were a response to Mr. Rozario’s killing and the department’s failure to notify the review board responsible for prosecuting his case that he was on the path to retirement.
Last September, the Civilian Complaint Review Board voted to substantiate claims that Officer Alongi and Officer Matthew Cianfrocco had used excessive force when they fatally shot Mr. Rozario in Queens after the police said he lunged at them with scissors. Days later, Ms. Tisch recommended that charges move ahead to an administrative trial. In December 2025, Letitia James, the attorney general, declined to bring criminal charges against Officers Alongi and Cianfrocco.
In August the C.C.R.B asked the police about Mr. Alongi’s status and learned that he had retired in May, preventing the case against him from going forward, according to the board and a chronology of the events provided by the police.
According to an agreement between the agencies, it is the police department’s responsibility to inform the watchdog board when an officer facing departmental charges files for retirement. In those cases, the review board can then expedite the prosecution, before the officer’s pension is finalized.
Following news of Mr. Alongi’s retirement, Ms. Tisch said the failure was a result of “human error” and apologized for it.
“When we make a mistake, we need to acknowledge it,” she said in a statement.
After the failed communication came to light, the police department put in place a new notification system to “facilitate the completion of the disciplinary process before an officer retires,” according to the mayor’s office.
Still, Notan Eva Costa and Francis Rozario, the parents of Mr. Rozario, said they were “disgusted” when they learned that the officer charged with misconduct in their son’s death could no longer be prosecuted.
“We’re disgusted by Commissioner Tisch’s response to our family exposing that the N.Y.P.D. let Alongi retire with a full pension, without standing trial,” the family members said in a statement, released by Justice Committee, an advocacy group.
Dakota Gardner, a spokesman for the Civilian Complaint Review Board, said the trial of Mr. Cianfrocco, the other officer facing departmental charges, “will continue as planned.”
Patrick Hendry, the president of the police officers’ union, said there should be no review of the use-of-force policies and called the C.C.R.B’s recommendations in the case “blatantly biased.”
“The mayor’s radical base wants a wholesale dismantling of the N.Y.P.D. and it’s clear this announcement is an attempt to appease them,” Mr. Hendry said in a statement. “It won’t work, and it won’t make New Yorkers any safer.”
Mr. Mamdani also announced on Monday that he would increase funding for the Office of the Inspector General, another police oversight body, and make sure the department complies with other reporting laws involving police-involved deaths.
The post Mamdani Rolls Out Police Reforms Related to Use of Force appeared first on New York Times.
