Last Wednesday, NYPD officers fatally shot a 19-year-old man in his own home. There is a strong possibility that this man, who was in mental distress and had called 911, was shot and killed while his mother held him. The officers said they unloaded their bullets in self-defense: the man, named Win Rozario, had threatened them with a pair of scissors.
There is body camera footage and we will know far more if or when the police release it. (The footage is covered under the state’s Freedom of Information law and could be forced into public view.) For now, there are two conflicting accounts of what happened. According to police, officers tried to take Rozario into custody and he pulled out a pair of scissors from a drawer and “came toward” them. Two officers fired their Tasers at Rozario and appeared to have him subdued.
“But a mother, being a mother, came to the aid of her son to help him, but in doing so she accidentally knocked the Tasers out of his body,” John Chell, the NYPD’s chief of patrol, told reporters. Rozario picked up the scissors and came at the officers again, the chief said. He wouldn’t say how exactly the police managed to escalate the confrontation.
“They had no choice but to defend themselves, discharging their firearms,” Chell said.
Chell didn’t say how many times Rozario was shot. His family claimed six times. His 17-year-old brother, Ushto, directly contradicted police accounts, telling reporters his mother had been holding his brother in her arms throughout the encounter.
“As my mother was still hugging him, they shot him with the Taser,” Ushto Rozario said. “So they shot him with the Tasers, and my brother didn’t really go down. So one of the cops pulled out a gun and shot him as my mother was still hugging him.”
“First of all, it was two police officers against him,” he said. “And my mother was already holding him, so he couldn’t really do anything.”
In either scenario, armed police killed a teenager who brandished a pair of scissors at them. If Ushto Rozario is to be believed—again, camera footage should bear our what exactly happened—police quite literally opened fire at a teen holding scissors as his mother held him. They could have, with one errant shot, killed her as well. The episode already has unsettling echoes of Deborah Danner.
In the days since, I have wondered why this police killing has not provoked more furor. Various Democratic elected officials in New York City have released statements criticizing the conduct of the NYPD while lamenting that mental health professionals weren’t dispatched to Rozario’s Queens home to help him. In 2021, under Mayor Bill de Blasio, the city created pilot program pairing mental health professionals and emergency medical workers to respond to certain 911 calls that involve someone experiencing mental distress. The program has seen some success so far and is expanding; it does not yet exist, however, in the 102nd Precinct, where Rozario was killed.
A vigil was held for the teen and the family remains outraged. What seems missing, though, is any of the greater fury that accompanied police killings in the 2010s and 2020. Black Lives Matter, the Democratic Socialists of America, and other social justice organizations haven’t yet staged any mass marches to protest the killing of Rozario. It’s the Bangladeshi community, for now, spearheading the protests, which are not blocking any highways and bridges, nor flooding any busy avenues.
Where is the activist left? Why has this latest police killing failed to galvanize New York City, let alone the rest of America?