Mayor Zohran Mamdani ordered the New York Police Department on Monday to review its use-of-force policies and overhaul how it notifies civilian overseers when officers facing misconduct charges head for the exits. The move comes after Officer Salvatore Alongi retired on a disability pension in May without ever standing trial for his role in the fatal shooting of 19-year-old Win Rozario, a Queens teenager killed during a mental health crisis response in March 2024.
Mamdani said the department had failed to notify the Civilian Complaint Review Board that Alongi was on a path to retirement, allowing him to walk away from the force before facing the disciplinary trial the board had already recommended. According to The New York Times, the mayor's office said the new measures were a direct response to both Rozario's killing and the department's notification failure. Under a memorandum of understanding between the NYPD and the CCRB, the department is legally required to alert the board when an officer facing misconduct charges applies for retirement, but as reported by City & State New York, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch acknowledged that notice never went out when Alongi applied for his pension.
A Notification Failure With Lasting Consequences
The CCRB had substantiated fireable excessive force and abuse of authority charges against both Alongi and his partner, Officer Matthew Cianfrocco, in September 2025 over the five gunshots the two fired within two minutes of arriving at Rozario's home. The board's jurisdiction ends the moment an officer leaves the force, and per the city's oversight agreement, that is exactly what happened with Alongi. The second officer, Cianfrocco, remains on the job and still faces a pending disciplinary trial, the Queens Daily Eagle notes.
The shooting itself was cleared of criminal wrongdoing well before the administrative case fell apart. The New York Attorney General's Office of Special Investigation, which holds mandatory jurisdiction over police-involved civilian deaths, concluded in a December 2025 report that neither Alongi nor Cianfrocco would face criminal charges for the gunfire that killed Rozario during the mental health call, according to CBS News.
Mamdani Puts Money Behind the Fix
To address the gap, Mamdani announced $2.6 million in new funding to staff up the Office of the Inspector General for the NYPD, which was operating at less than one-third of its intended workforce as of May. The Inspector General functions as an independent policy auditor of the department, and the funding boost is meant to help catch procedural breakdowns like the one that let Alongi retire unchallenged, per the same City & State report.
Mamdani framed the overhaul in blunt terms. “The accountability standard for government use of force against New Yorkers must be at its highest,” he said, adding that “every New Yorker deserves to know that force will be used lawfully, carefully and only when necessary,” according to the Times.
Pressure From the Left on Commissioner Tisch
The reform package lands amid sustained friction between Mamdani and his own political base. He has faced criticism for not doing enough to transform public safety, a pledge central to his mayoral campaign, and the Democratic Socialists of America have called on him to fire Commissioner Tisch, whom he retained from the Adams administration after taking office in January. The Forward reports that Mamdani's decision to keep Tisch has angered progressive allies who expected a far more radical break from NYPD leadership, a tension that predates even his inauguration — Tisch once apologized to Mamdani after his brother's derogatory comments became public.
That pressure has intensified alongside a separate, federal controversy. On October 8, ICE agents shot 28-year-old Oscar Belgal in the neck during an enforcement operation in Marble Hill while his 5-year-old son sat in the backseat of the vehicle, firing seven rounds through the car, according to Courthouse News. Federal officials said Belgal accelerated toward agents and had direct or indirect knowledge of a July 2025 shooting that injured an off-duty U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer in Fort Washington Park, as reported by Newsday.
A Broader Pattern of Federal and Local Force
The Legal Aid Society has tracked at least 21 shootings by federal immigration agents nationwide between January 2025 and October 2026, a sharp rise in force during civil enforcement operations the group attributes to the current federal administration. Mamdani signed an executive order in February barring ICE agents from entering municipal property, including schools, shelters, and hospitals, without a judicial warrant, a policy Hoodline covered at the time as part of the city's sanctuary protections.
The financial stakes of police misconduct loom over the debate as well. Data compiled by the Legal Aid Society shows New York City taxpayers spent $53 million in the first six months of 2026 settling police misconduct lawsuits, putting the city on pace for a fourth straight year of payouts topping $100 million, according to the Community Service Society of New York. For Mamdani, the Alongi case has become a test of whether oversight fixes and funding boosts can satisfy a base pushing for far more sweeping change to how the city polices itself.
