The recent police shooting of a Queens man, Jabez Chakraborty, has prompted Mayor Zohran Mamdani to announce the release of the NYPD body-camera footage. Chakraborty, 22, was shot by police on January 26, while allegedly brandishing a knife. According to the Gothamist, officials said that the man advanced on officers with a knife despite their attempts to deescalate the situation. He is now on a ventilator in Jamaica Hospital after undergoing multiple surgeries as a result of the shooting, a spokesperson for his family stated.
Mayor Mamdani visited the injured man and his family, indicating that Chakraborty has been living with schizophrenia and emphasising the need for a mental health care system to better handle such crises. "No family should experience such pain," Mamdani wrote, as quoted in a post on X. The mayor further asserted to have proposed the creation of a Department of Community Safety and has instructed his administration to swiftly build out an implementation plan for this initiative. These remarks come following criticism of the NYPD’s conduct and questions regarding how the new agency would function, as per the Gothamist.
On the other side of the narrative, Chakraborty's family claimed through a statement posted online by Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), that they expected an ambulance, not police to arrive following their 911 call for their emotionally distressed son. As reported by the New York Post, the NYPD defended the shooting, stating that Chakraborty continued to follow the officers with a knife even as they attempted to retreat and eventually forced his way past a door the officers had closed.
The Chakraborty family also accused the NYPD officers on the scene of interrogating them about their country of origin and confiscating their phones. The NYPD contends that family members signed consent forms to turn over the phones and that a review of body-camera footage didn’t reveal any officers asking about immigration status. In addition, they affirmed that officers on the scene performed life-saving measures on the injured man. The Queens DA has subsequently indicted Chakraborty for attempted murder, and he is currently being guarded by police while in hospital care.
The family has demanded that the DA decline to prosecute Chakraborty, while Mayor Mamdani’s administration and its proposed reforms remain faced squarely against public scrutiny following this and several other police-involved shootings this year. With the body-camera footage soon to become public, the incident's details will likely to come under closer examination by the community and the media alike.
