By Colin Mixson
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — NYPD body-cam footage released Tuesday shows the moment an officer opened fire and severely injured a mentally ill Queens man brandishing a kitchen knife as he advanced toward police.
Officer Tyree White and his partner entered the home of Jabez Chakraborty on Parsons Blvd. in Briarwood on Jan. 26 after his family complained Chakraborty, 22, had hurled a glass inside the house around 10:30 a.m., cops said.
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After being greeted by a woman at the home, the video shows White passing through a glass-paned door separating a vestibule area from the living room. Chakraborty immediately grabs a knife in the kitchen and starts moving straight toward the officer.
The woman tries to hold Chakraborty back, grabbing his free hand, while shouting at him, “Baba! Baba, no! no!” but he brushes her aside and advances toward the officers while brandishing the knife.
White immediately retreats back into the vestibule and slams shut the glass-paned door while ordering Chakraborty to drop the weapon.
“Put the knife down! Put the knife down!” White can be heard shouting in the video.
Despite the officer’s orders, Chakraborty turns the door handle, opens the door and is seen muscling his way through as White fires four shots. The footage is obscured by White’s arms as he opens fire.
The video ends as Chakraborty collapses onto a couch and groans in pain with the officer continuing to yell at him to drop the knife. The encounter lasts about a minute.
All police-involved fatal shootings are investigated by the state attorney general.
After shooting Chakraborty, the officers provided first aid, and used a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, NYPD Assistant Chief Chris McIntosh said the day of the shooting.
Medics rushed Chakraborty to an area hospital, where he remains in critical but stable condition.
White joined the force in January 2023 and is assigned to the 107th Precinct. His record shows no history of disciplinary actions, according to his online NYPD profile.
The NYPD released the footage a day after Mayor Mamdani urged Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz not to charge Chakraborty, with the mayor saying the suspect “needs mental health care, not criminal prosecution.”
“In viewing this footage, it is clear to me that what Jabez needs is mental health treatment, not criminal prosecution from a district attorney,” Mamdani said, “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.”
Mamdani said Tuesday at an unrelated press conference that he had visited Chakraborty in the hospital and met with the critically wounded man’s family Saturday.
President Patrick Hendry, president of the Police Benevolent Association, said, “The video makes it clear that these police officers walked into an unpredictable, fast-moving and dangerous situation. There was no time or space for them to deescalate the situation before they were forced to act. They did their job professionally and with restraint under terrible circumstances.”
The release of footage from the Queens shooting follows the Jan. 28 release of video from two other police-involved shootings that both occurred on Jan. 8 and were both fatal — one in New York-Presbyterian Hospital Brooklyn Methodist and the other in the West Village in Manhattan .
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