RELEASE: Chakraborty Family Calls for Non-police Responses to Medical Needs After 911 call and Body-Camera Footage of 22-Year Old Shot are Released

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, February 4, 2026

MEDIA CONTACTS: 
communications@drumnyc.org

Chakraborty Family Calls for Non-police Responses to Medical Needs After 911 call and Body-Camera Footage of 22-Year Old Shot are Released 

New York, NY: Last night, NYPD released bodyworn camera (BWC) footage of Officer Tyree White shooting 22-year-old Jabez Chakraborty in his home in front of his family on January 26. Today we heard the release of the 911 call which indicates a member of the Chakraborty family calling 911 seeking medical attention for Jabez, who was experiencing emotional distress. The family expected medical support to arrive. Instead, the NYPD showed up. The Chakraborty family issued the following statement:

“We viewed the body cam footage released yesterday evening from the hospital room of our son who is currently in handcuffs, leg cuffs, and recovering from multiple gunshot wounds. We have endured the past week with immense psychological pressure. Our priority for this past week has been the recovery of our son and making sure his health does not deteriorate. But the speed and intensity with which everything has moved has been overwhelming. We wish we had more time to process as a family, to understand everything that is happening around us, and the time to view the footage as a family before it was released.

Viewing this footage takes us back to that horrible moment – when we were trying to get medical care for him and instead NYPD officers arrived. As you can hear on the 911 call, the situation was calm when the call was made, and we were getting ready to go to accompany Jabez. As everyone can see from the body cam footage, we were all calm as the officers arrived. The presence of cops did the opposite and caused the situation to escalate quickly and unnecessarily. Rather than de-escalate the situation, the officer instead further escalated by drawing his gun and yelling orders at Jabez. Within a minute of NYPD’s arrival, Jabez was shot multiple times and almost killed, while he was calmly eating food just minutes earlier. This is why officers should not be responding to medical support calls.

Seeing the limited footage, with the NYPD’s biased narration, is an extra trauma for our family because it doesn’t reveal what we experienced after the shooting. The way that officers yelled at all of us clearly indicated they were there neither to protect us nor to serve us. Instead they asked us about our immigration status, and the Force Investigation Division used intimidation to seize our phones and passwords. We were then taken to the precinct where we were held for hours without a concept of time or what was happening. All the while we didn’t know if Jabez was alive or dead and NYPD was quickly moving to cover their tracks having a press conference and releasing statements.

Even while we have been at the hospital the NYPD has harassed us and the medical staff to try to record a statement from Jabez. After undergoing multiple surgeries this week, Jabez is suffering from severe injuries from being shot so many times and cannot be released from the hospital right now as he is still in ICU where he is in and out of consciousness. NYPD officers remain stationed outside of his hospital room, as he fights for his life while being cuffed. Meanwhile, we are worried about the fact that he is being prosecuted by the Queens DA.

We want to see the entire range of the NYPD recordings which should begin with the first officers arriving and all the way until the last officers leaving the home, including the officers questioning of our family members. 

We need the Queens DA to drop the prosecution against our son. 

We call on Mayor Mamdani and public officials to support us to remove the cuffs from Jabez, and for the NYPD to stop harassing us

Given our experience, and that of many other families, we call on the Mayor for systems where we can call for responders who are not police. We call for changes where the needs of families in the aftermath of such incidents are centered rather than further traumatized over and over.”

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