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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on Tuesday that he does not believe the Queens district attorney should prosecute a mentally ill man who was shot by police as he ran toward officers with a knife, arguing that the individual needs mental health treatment instead.
Jabez Chakraborty, 22, was holding a large kitchen knife and charged at the officers who responded to the emergency call from the family on Jan. 26, NYPD officials said. The officers repeatedly told him to drop it as they attempted to de-escalate the situation before one officer fired several times, striking Chakraborty, who was then taken to a hospital in critical condition.
The family had called 911 to report that Chakraborty was throwing glass at his home on Parsons Blvd. in Briarwood, NYPD officials said, according to the New York Daily News.
After the officers responded to the home, Chakraborty charged them with the knife, according to the NYPD. The officers repeatedly instructed him to drop the weapon and attempted to isolate him in the home’s living room by closing a glass door between them and Chakraborty. But police said he managed to open the door and overwhelm the officers with the knife extended.
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The officers did not draw their guns until Chakraborty pulled the knife, NYPD officials said.
The officers provided first aid and attempted to stop the bleeding following the shooting, according to the agency. He was then rushed to the hospital, where he is in critical but stable condition.
The family had asked for emergency medical workers to respond to the incident rather than police, the family said in a statement. The family said Chakraborty was shot at least four times.
“We called for help,” the family said. “We called 911 for an ambulance to provide medical attention for our son, who was in emotional distress. We did not call the police. Instead of medical responders, the NYPD arrived and shot our son multiple times right in front of us.”
The Queens district attorney’s office is investigating the incident, with preliminary reports suggesting prosecutors were looking at potentially seeking an indictment for attempted murder.
But Mamdani, who has viewed the body camera footage, said the man needs mental health treatment instead of facing criminal charges.
“In viewing this footage, it is clear to me that what Jabez needs is mental health treatment, not criminal prosecution from a district attorney, and we are talking about a family that is enduring the kind of pain that no family should and an individual that has lived with schizophrenia for many years,” the mayor said at a news conference on Tuesday.
“A person experiencing a mental health episode does not always have to be served first or exclusively by a police officer. It is important for us to have all of the options available,” he added.
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The mayor also said he had met with Chakraborty’s family, who had criticized him for his initial response to the shooting. Mamdani said hours after the shooting that police had “encountered an individual wielding a knife,” and that he was “grateful to the first responders who put themselves on the line each day to keep our communities safe.”
“After all this, we saw Mayor Mamdani’s statement applauding the NYPD officers that shot our son, threatened and lied to us, and kept us from seeing our son for over 24 hours,” the family’s statement read. “Why is the mayor applauding officers who recklessly almost killed our son in front of us?”
