There’s more fallout in the wake of the recent NYPD shooting of a 22-year-old knife-wielding man in Queens.
NYPD bodycam footage of the shooting was released Tuesday. Wednesday, police released the 911 call that brought them to the scene.
The NYPD and the family of Jabez Chakraborty, the man who was shot, believe the 911 call proves two different things.
“Involuntary transportation” triggers police response
In the 911 call from Jan. 26 released by the NYPD, a Chakraborty family member asks the operator for involuntary transportation in an ambulance. In the same 911 call, the family member seems to indicate they had to make similar calls previously.
“We want involuntary transportation,” the 911 caller said. “Last time, when something like this happened, we called for the cops and they said we should have called an ambulance instead.”
“Well, normally both parties respond whenever you call for someone having a [redacted],” the 911 operator can be heard saying.
The NYPD says that any 911 call for an involuntary transport automatically triggers a police response.
Video shows Chakraborty coming at police with a knife
The bodycam footage released by the NYPD appears to show Chakraborty grabbing a knife and advancing towards police shortly after they enter the home. The officers can be heard repeatedly telling Chakraborty to put the knife down. When Chakraborty advanced past a door that police had closed behind them, police fired four shots. Chakraborty remains hospitalized.
In a statement released Wednesday, the Chakraborty family said that instead of the medical care they were seeking, the responding officers “caused the situation to escalate quickly and unnecessarily,” and “this is why officers should not be responding to medical support calls.”
David Sarni, a retired NYPD detective and current professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said in his view, the officers followed their training.
“There was almost no time to do [de-escalation] because they just entered the apartment and that’s when the knife gets brandished, knife gets picked up,” Sarni said.
Jabez Chakraborty
Family handout
CBS News New York spoke with Simran Thind, a Chakraborty family representative, and asked if the family thinks that the police officers’ actions raised tensions at the time of the incident.
“I mean, potentially, right? We don’t know what Jabez was exactly thinking at that time,” Thind said. “When police are on mental health calls, they’re actually not well-equipped.”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani campaigned on creating the Department of Community Safety, specifically designed for mental health crisis response. He was asked Wednesday if he thinks the 911 call warranted the police response it got.
“I think that the questions at the heart of our pursuit of the Department of Community Safety are looking to answer exactly what mental health crisis response should look like. And I think what we are seeing is what it does look like today,” Mamdani said.
The Chakraborty family, in their statement, called on Mamdani “for systems where we can call for responders who are not police. We call for changes where the needs of families in the aftermath of such incidents are centered rather than further traumatized over and over.”