The office of State Attorney General Letitia James on Thursday announced that it will not pursue criminal charges against two NYPD officers who last year shot and killed a 19-year-old who was experiencing a mental health crisis in his Queens home.
Within two minutes of arriving at the teen’s home in Ozone Park on March 27, 2024, officers Salvator Alongi and Matthew Cianfrocco fatally shot Win Rozario five times after he picked up a pair of scissors and, at one point, advanced toward them.
The attorney general’s report on whether the shooting was justified said the officers fired the first time when Rozario advanced toward them holding the scissors, and fired again after he retrieved the scissors and took a step forward.
The report notes that the cops fired three more times when Rozario, still holding the scissors, was standing still in his kitchen — at a distance of at least seven feet from the nearest officer.
“The officers fired gunshots at Mr. Rozario after he had advanced toward them and did not comply with repeated commands to drop the scissors,” reads a press release from the AG’s office. “Therefore, the reasonableness of the officers’ fear that Mr. Rozario would come at them again with the scissors cannot be disproved beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Rozario’s mother, Notan Eva Costa, father, Francis Rozario, and brother, Utsho Rozario, put out a joint statement immediately following the report’s release condemning the attorney general’s report as “inconsistent” with what they witnessed and “biased” toward the officers.
“State Attorney General Letitia James’ cowardly decision not to indict NYPD Officers Matthew Cianfrocco and Salvatore Alongi for murdering our beloved son and brother, Win Rozario, feels like we’re watching Win get murdered all over again,” they said. “Officers Cianfrocco and Alongi used derogatory language, cursed at us, barked orders, then tased and shot Win at least five times in under two minutes, all while we begged them to stop,” the family members added. “It is a miracle we weren’t also killed by Cianfrocco and Alongi’s recklessness.”
Rozario’s family and advocates have previously argued that the officers missed multiple opportunities to de-escalate the situation, and in fact, antagonized Rozario by shooting him with a Taser at one point while he was standing in the kitchen unarmed — after his mother had taken the scissors away.
State law requires the attorney general to review and decide whether to prosecute police in killings of civilians, a power granted after a Staten Island grand jury declined to indict the NYPD officer involved in the chokehold death of Eric Garner in 2014.
The group New York Lawyers for the Public Interest says there have been 21 police killings of people in mental or emotional distress by the NYPD over the past decade. They and other groups have advocated for mental health professionals to respond to these situations instead of police officers.
Under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, the city piloted a program known as B-Heard that sought to divert calls to 911 in response to non-violent, mental distress situations to a team of health professionals instead of the police department.
The program has had mixed success, in part because many such calls were still routed to the police department.
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has made removing police from mental distress calls a centerpiece of his plan to launch a Department of Community Safety, which is intended in part to free up police officers to deal with more serious crimes.
The attorney general’s report recommends the B-Heard program be scaled citywide.
The Civilian Complaint Review Board, a city agency that investigates and administratively prosecutes police misconduct, filed disciplinary charges against Alongi and Cianfrocco in September that included improper use of force findings for four of the five shots fired.
In a rare outcome, the board’s members voted to approve the charges even though agency investigators deemed the firing of the guns to be within departmental guidelines.
That case is pending, but NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch has final authority over whether the officers should be disciplined.
Alongi told investigators at the AG’s office that after he fired the first Taser at Rozario as he was approaching with the scissors, he fired a second Taser even though Rozario’s mom had placed the scissors on a chair based on Rozario’s “proximity to the scissors and the knife drawer.”
It was after the second Taser struck Rozario that he picked up the scissors again and rushed toward the officers in the living room. That’s when Cianfrocco shot him for the first time, hitting him in his left arm.
Rozario’s mom then tried to wrestle the scissors away from her son, while his brother joined the tussle. All three fell to the ground near the kitchen doorway, as did the scissors, according to footage of the incident.
Rozario quickly stood up, grabbed the scissors from the kitchen floor, and turned to face the officers, who were still in the living room.
As Rozario went to take a step forward, Cianfrocco shot him a second time.
The AG’s report notes that the officers didn’t shoot Rozario until he took that step forward. The last three shots were fired while Rozario was standing in place or even wobbling backward, still holding the scissors, after which he fell to the floor, according to the report.
He was taken to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.
“The reasonableness of the officers’ actions in response to Mr. Rozario’s actions cannot be disproved beyond a reasonable doubt given that they did not resort to deadly physical force right away, having twice used a Taser, and given that, when they did use their firearms, they did not simply ‘blast away,’ but paused between shots, shouted commands, and gave Mr. Rozario opportunities to drop the scissors,” the report says.
A lawsuit filed by the family against the city, the NYPD and the officers described the shots fired at Rozario in the kitchen differently.
“Mr. Rozario did not move towards Defendant Cianfrocco after any of these shots,” it said. “Still, Defendant Cianfrocco chose to continue firing shots.”
