Two young Bangladeshi American men were shot by the NYPD. One of them died. Their families are demanding justice and reform.
Members of the Bangladeshi American community and other activists turn out for a demonstration and vigil for Win Rozario on March 29, 2024, in New York City.(Spencer Platt / Getty Images)
On March 27, the second anniversary of Win Rozario’s death at the hands of the New York Police Department, his family gathered at Diversity Plaza in the Queens neighborhood of Jackson Heights for a public rally. It was one of the first warm days of spring, and Notun Eva Costa, Win’s mother, stood behind a banner reading “Fire Officers Cianfrocco and Alongi.” She was flanked by South Asian elders chanting, “Justice for Win Rozario!”
There were a handful of speeches, including one from New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. After each speech concluded, the event’s organizers, part of the social-justice group known as Desis Rising Up and Moving, or DRUM, dutifully reminded the rally’s attendees to take photos, post them on social media, and tag Mayor Zohran Mamdani and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch. Eva, a middle-aged woman with slicked hair and a round face, stood before the cameras with her eyes fixed on the ground.
Behind her, a taller woman placed a comforting hand on Eva’s shoulder. She had a sharp chin, reddish hair, and redder eyes from crying. Juli Chakraborty looked around the crowd frantically, as if trying to determine whether this, too, would become her future as the mother of a son, Jabez Chakraborty, who had nearly been killed by the NYPD.
Roughly two years apart, two Bangladeshi American men were shot by NYPD officers following mental-distress-related 911 calls. In the case of 19-year-old Win Rozario, the bullet wounds proved fatal. Twenty-two-year-old Chakraborty survived five gunshots. There is a likeness to the tragedies and their aftermath, including the fact that the victims were both from a small Christian Bangladeshi community in Queens. “Although police brutality has been, tragically, experienced heavily by Black and other brown communities, it has not as frequently resulted in officer-caused killings in South Asian communities, particularly for Bangladeshi Christians,” Rebecca Chowdhury, an organizer with DRUM, told me.
Following the shooting of Jabez Chakraborty, Mamdani signed an executive order to form the Office of Community Safety—a partial realization of his campaign promise to mitigate mental-health and other emergencies through nonpolice means. But the willingness of police, city officials, and mental-health professionals to cross-collaborate has long been a fraught and stalled process, resulting in the police-induced deaths of New Yorkers like Win Rozario. As a result, this constituency of South Asians, who had hugely mobilized behind Mamdani’s candidacy, is once again organizing to demand even more reform from their city and its mayor.
On March 27, 2024, Win Rozario, a broad-shouldered, square-faced 19-year-old, woke up feeling exceptionally depressed. According to Eva, he confided in her about his suicidal ideation that morning. She knew to take him seriously; her son had attempted suicide before. Win’s father, Francis Rozario, was already at work at JFK Airport. Concerned that she might need help if his condition worsened, his mother asked Win’s 17-year-old younger brother to stay home from school. Eva then spent two hours comforting Win until he said, “I am not going to have these thoughts anymore.” He got up to shower. Eva briefly stepped out of their home in Ozone Park, Queens, to go to a nearby church to pray for her son and light a candle. Then she bought him a slice of cake to lift his mood. When she returned, Win told her he had called 911—neither she nor his brother had heard him do so. When NYPD officers knocked on their pale-yellow door, Win said he was feeling much better. Eva asked her younger son to answer and tell the officers they were no longer needed. She later told me, “We didn’t know you don’t have to let them inside.”
It turned out that the two officers, Matthew Cianfrocco and Salvatore Alongi, had been in the apartment before, having been called after one of Win’s previous suicide attempts. On that occasion, they spent 30 minutes speaking with him and managed to talk him down. Recalling that meeting to the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), Officer Cianfrocco described Win as a “non-threatening kid” who talked about his despair over being prevented from his dream of joining the US military by his family’s lack of a green card. Eva has since maintained that her son was not mentally unwell but circumstantially depressed because of the absence of the green card.
Upon entering the apartment for the second and last time, Cianfrocco instantly remembered Win. But that didn’t stop what happened next.
Footage from Cianfrocco’s body camera captured the scene. Win’s brother opens the door and says, “He is having an episode.” Alongi asks, “Is he bipolar? Schizo?” Win’s brother says he does not know. As officers enter and head upstairs, Win retreats to the kitchen, opens a drawer, and retrieves a pair of scissors. He takes a large step toward Alongi and is immediately tased. His mother grabs him. They grapple and fall to the ground. When they rise, she is holding the scissors. In the background, Win’s brother pleads, “Please do not shoot my mother.”
Eva, keeping the scissors out of Win’s reach, places herself between him and the officers, imploring in Bangla, “He is a good boy. Please.” The officers repeatedly order her to step away. Win begins to settle down. Eva sets the scissors on a nearby chair, steps back as told, and futilely orders the officers, “You arrest—don’t shoot.” For a moment, Win stands unarmed, staring blankly as if awaiting arrest. In the next second, both officers tase him again. He convulses, lunges for the scissors, then toward the officers.
Eva rushes to him, trying to pull the scissors away again; Win’s brother clings to his mother, crying, “Please don’t shoot my mom!” In the struggle, the scissors fall, and Win picks them up a third time, but does not approach the officers. Win’s brother and Eva are on the ground, in the line of fire. Both officers shoot at Win. Eva screams from the kitchen floor in an octave only a mother can reach, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” Win keels over. The entire incident unfolds in just over two minutes.
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After the shooting, two other officers drove Eva and her younger son to a precinct station. Eva recalls the officers in the car jovially chatting with one another as the two people in the back sat stiffly, wondering if their family member was dead or alive. Once at the station, Eva told me, she and her son were separately questioned about Win’s medical history and behavior. After what felt like a winding interrogation, an officer informed the family that Win was dead. They were allowed to reenter their home after 48 hours. When they did, Eva found a puddle of Win’s blood hardened on the kitchen floor.
In the two years since Win’s killing, his family has been drawn into a bewildering legal thicket. The New York Attorney General’s Office of Special Investigation declined to indict the officers, saying their use of deadly force was justified in the circumstances. Separately, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, New York City’s independent police monitor, charged Officers Alongi and Cianfrocco with abuse of authority and excessive force. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch has served those charges, but an internal disciplinary trial has yet to begin. Whether the officers are fired or face lesser penalties, including loss of vacation days, will ultimately be decided by Tisch.
The Rozario family has also filed a civil lawsuit against the city of New York. Luna Droubi, the Rozario family’s counsel, told me, “We are in active litigation in federal court, challenging the conduct of the officers individually and what happened to Win specifically, but also the larger policy and practice of the city.” While there are a host of avenues—civil and criminal—to hold officers accountable, Droubi explained, the internal systems that determine police dismissals, in which officers are effectively held responsible by fellow, higher-ranking officers, are opaque to civilians. Yul-san Liem of the Justice Committee—a prominent grassroots organization dedicated to ending police violence—told me that the NYPD disciplinary system is “completely biased towards police officers,” forcing families into public campaigns for nominal closure. Given the byzantine bureaucracy of justice, “organizing is aimed at making it politically untenable for the NYPD and the mayor not to take action.”
Less than six months after the Rozario family filed their lawsuit with the city, five miles away from the Rozario home, Jabez Chakraborty was hospitalized for consuming bleach. His family called 988, the mental-health line, seeking a nonpolice response. Chakraborty had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. His mother, Juli, calls him her “special boy” and describes him as compassionate, intelligent, and developmentally younger than his age. In publicly distributed photos, Jabez has a boyish smile and neatly parted hair.
The mobile crisis team arrived 48 hours after the 988 call. Juli and Hector Chakraborty, the parents of Jabez, told me they asked him rudimentary questions while standing outside the front door, such as “Do you hear voices?” When Jabez said no, they quickly left. Afterward, the family sought a more intensive treatment program at Zucker Hillside/Northwell Hospital, and Jabez was placed on its waiting list. In the meantime, his psychiatrist at Long Island Jewish (LIJ) Medical Center advised the family to call 911 and request an involuntary transport to LIJ in case of future emergencies.
One month later, on the morning of January 26, Jabez was throwing glass at a wall in his home in Jamaica Hills, Queens. Heeding the psychiatrist’s guidance, his older sister called 911, requesting an involuntary transport to LIJ. When the police arrived, Jabez had calmed, according to his mother, and was eating his breakfast. Hector—a respected pastor—was in another room working on a sermon. As caught in Officer Tyree White’s body camera footage, he knocked on the door, while joking with his partner, “Ever since I’ve been watching videos, I don’t stand in front of the door no more, bro.” His partner replied affirmatively, “Yeah, you never know.”
Juli opened the door and let them in. Upon spotting the police, Jabez instantly grabbed a kitchen knife and thrust it toward them. Juli tried to intervene, but Jabez easily pushed his mother aside. The officers backed up and closed a door in the entryway between them and Jabez. White commanded Jabez through the closed door to drop the knife, but Jabez pried the door open and brandished the knife. White shot him in the chest, abdomen, pelvis, and buttocks. This encounter lasted 37 seconds.
According to the Chakraborty family, police asked them to calm him after he had been shot. While he was writhing in pain with his insides splayed open, officers demanded that Hector “tell him to cooperate.” An investigator, who quickly arrived on the scene, asked whether the family had video recordings of the incident, then tried to play “good cop” by telling Hector, “Yeah, those police are bad.” The investigator took their phones and phone passwords, promising it would “make the process faster.” Hector remembers, “There was blood all over the place, and they were still asking us questions.”
The family also claims that the NYPD asked about their immigration status. NYPD Assistant Commissioner Brad Weekes vigorously denied this, telling me, “We want everyone to feel comfortable engaging with the NYPD. We don’t ask those questions.”
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Neighbors of the Chakraborty family later told them that it took about 40 minutes before Jabez was taken to a hospital. Even after the shooting, the family requested he be sent to LIJ, where he had preestablished psychiatric care, but he was transported to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center. Much to their chagrin, the family told me that it was Officer White, not Jabez, who was taken to LIJ with ringing in his ear from discharging a weapon. The NYPD did not confirm whether he was transported to a hospital or which one.
The Chakraborty family was held and questioned at a precinct for four hours, without knowledge of whether Jabez was still alive—much like the Rozarios. When they asked to see their son, they were told that the officer who permitted visitation was no longer at the precinct. They were allowed to visit him the next afternoon, more than 24 hours after. When Juli asked Jabez why he grabbed the knife, he told her, “I was trying to protect you, Mommy.”
When addressing the delay in transporting Jabez after he was shot, Weekes told me, “It’s not NYPD. That’s EMS arriving late,” adding that the officer who fired immediately rendered aid. What can be attributed to the NYPD is its clinical impenitence and malfeasance in the aftermath. In these cases, the officers who discharged their weapons become medics; their colleagues swarm in as transporters, investigators, and intermediaries. Families are quickly siloed, treated with suspicion, and left to seek information from the same authority responsible for the shooting. Few other situations come to mind where an entity that has just used lethal force is also in the position of managing both the victim’s lifesaving care and the investigation of its own actions.
While Officer White’s culpability will long be investigated, Jabez has already been arraigned on charges of attempted assault and weapon possession for advancing on a NYPD officer. He faces 15 years in prison if convicted. Jabez appeared in court via video, with his feet and hands shackled to his hospital bed. He sobbed sporadically. Assistant District Attorney Hugh McCann argued that the bedridden, mentally unfit individual was a flight risk. “As our client appeared with bullet wounds across his body,” the Chakraborty counsel told me, “a prosecutor responded to our argument: ‘What I heard is a lot of playing victim here, but don’t forget, Police Officer White is the real victim.’”
The Chakrabortys secured his bond with a $10,000 deposit. Put another way, they paid the city $10,000 for the shooting of their son. More than half a year later, Jabez still uses a colostomy bag and has undergone several major surgeries. According to the Queens Daily Eagle, “Doctors will likely leave one bullet inside his body because it sits too close to his heart.”
Shortly after she began her tenure as deputy mayor for the Office of Community Safety (OCS), I spoke to Renita Francois about Win Rozario, Jabez Chakraborty, and the prevention of such incidents in the future. She described the current system of emergency response as a “patchwork of services.” The office’s aim, she said, is to “expand what the definition of safety looks like” by increasing public awareness of available options. including a program piloted in 2021 known as B-Heard, which sends mental health workers to crises in lieu of officers.
Last year, The New York Times reported that between 2022 and 2024 B-Heard did not respond to 35 percent of eligible calls, leaving police as the first responders. The AG’s report of the Win Rozario case acknowledges that “B-Heard did not cover the 102nd Precinct and would not have been able to respond even if called.” Responding to skepticism from Police Commissioner Tisch, who said only 2 percent of emergency calls would be diverted from police by the new office, Francois answered, “We will expand on the 2 percent.”
Recently, three months after the announcement of the OCS, Tisch bluntly testified during a City Council hearing that no talks had commenced between the police force and that office on a shift in responsibilities or policy. A spokesperson for the OCS told me that the deputy mayor and police commissioner have since met and had a “productive discussion” about “ways to advance their shared goal of making the five boroughs safer for all New Yorkers.”
Following the death of Win Rozario, the Bangladeshi American Police Association (BAPA) refused to make a public statement, DRUM noted to me. They have not responded to me either. When I asked Brad Weekes if BAPA ever works with DRUM, he rebutted, “Has DRUM ever reached out to them?”
Amid the puerile finger-pointing and temporized decision-making, New Yorkers in need are forgotten twice over—once while individuals are in the throes of psychological catastrophe, and then a second time, when their families are left waiting for various verdicts by legal and bureaucratic entities. In the current model, responsibility is deliberately refracted, so accountability can be as well. The cardinal challenge the OCS then faces is to dissolve the calcified distrust among city elements, which hinders the development of more lucid emergency response models.
Juli Chakraborty attended the rally for Win Rozario’s death anniversary on the same day a Queens judge refused a motion to dismiss charges against her son. In the coming years, the Chakrabortys must ensure the physical mending of their son, stabilize his mental health, and continue to fight a thorny legal battle over his freedom.
In the meantime, the Rozario family will proceed with what has become an unending drudgery of recourse. Among the many disappointments such families endure is how they must live with the years-long fallout of incidents that unfolded in less than minutes. In the aftermath, an immense organizing operation to demand reform to prevent future tragedies must be led and sustained by the victims themselves and their families.
One day after he was shot, Jabez Chakraborty was taken off the waiting list and admitted to the Hillside treatment program. Win Rozario’s family received their green card about a year after he was killed.
Ade KhanAde Khan is a writer from Dhaka, Bangladesh. She lives in New York City.