Family members of a 22-year-old man shot by NYPD officers in Queens on Monday said they called 911 requesting medical transport and not police, according to a family spokesperson.
Simran Thind, with Desis Rising Up and Moving, a South Asian immigrant advocacy group, said Jabez Chakraborty remains on a ventilator and has undergone multiple surgeries after being shot at least four times.
The NYPD says police were called to Chakraborty’s Briarwood home on Parsons Boulevard near 85th Avenue because a man was breaking glass. When they arrived, Chakraborty advanced toward officers with a kitchen knife, officials said.
But Thind said the family specifically asked the 911 dispatcher for an EMS response.
“They said that he was not a threat, he just needs to go to the hospital,” she said. “
But an NYPD spokesperson said the 911 caller requested an involuntary removal, which triggers both EMS and police response. The FDNY said EMS did respond to a mental health emergency.
The NYPD spokesperson said officers were invited into the home by the family and did not draw weapons until Chakraborty grabbed a knife.
The family also accused officers of seizing their phones and asking immigration-related questions after the shooting. Thind said officers asked what country the family was from, when they last visited and whether their daughter was born in the United States.
“There’s no reason for that,” Thind said. “That is something that is so irrelevant to what has happened.”
The NYPD disputed that account. A spokesperson said there was no evidence officers asked immigration-related questions, and that phones were seized later at the district attorney’s request. Queens DA’s office spokesperson Brendan Brosh said the office doesn’t comment on investigations.
The family said the incident reminded them of the shooting of Win Rozario, a 19-year-old from the same Bangladeshi Christian community who was killed by NYPD officers responding to a mental health call in Ozone Park in March 2024.
Rozario’s family had called 911 seeking help during a mental health crisis, and officers shot him after he picked up a pair of scissors. The state attorney general’s office declined to prosecute the officers in that case,. But the Civilian Complaint Review Board has recommended misconduct charges against them, overriding its own investigators’ findings, which could lead to a departmental trial.
“She was worried that the same way that Win was killed, that her son was about to be killed by the police,” Thind said of the mother, Juli Chakraborty. “She was just so scared that this was going to happen to her son.”