Mamdani orders sweeping NYPD force review as fallout from Win Rozario case grows

Mayor Zohran Mamdani told the NYPD on Monday to take a hard look at how its officers use force. City Hall calls it the first department-wide examination of those rules in 10 years and says the process will run for months, with a chance for the public to weigh in.

The order comes days after the department admitted it let an officer retire before he faced a disciplinary trial over the 2024 death of Win Rozario. “When the government uses force against a New Yorker, the standard for accountability must be at its highest,” Mamdani said in a statement.

What changes at the NYPD besides the review

• The NYPD inspector general’s office gets $2.6 million more. City officials say that triples its staff and restores it to its historic peak.
• A new NYPD notification system is meant to finish disciplinary cases before an officer retires.
• The department will formally alert the state Division of Criminal Justice Services whenever an officer retires with charges pending.
• Personnel records go to the state for possible decertification, so an officer who leaves under scrutiny cannot simply join another New York police department.
• After someone is killed or seriously injured in a critical incident, relatives and their representatives can request the Force Investigation Division’s final report.

The Win Rozario case and the officer who retired

In March 2024, two officers shot and killed Rozario, 19, inside his family’s Queens home while he was going through a mental health crisis. Prosecutors in the state attorney general’s office chose not to bring charges. The case still moved ahead at the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the city agency that handles complaints about police conduct. It approved misconduct charges against Officers Salvatore Alongi and Matthew Cianfrocco, even though its own staff had concluded that both followed NYPD guidelines. A trial date has yet to be scheduled.

Alongi filed for retirement in August 2025, and the NYPD never told the board. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch acknowledged the failure on Thursday and apologized. The board says Cianfrocco’s trial will continue as planned.

Pressure from the left and from the police union

The reforms are Mamdani’s first big response to supporters who say he has backed away from his campaign promises on policing. The NYPD still keeps the Strategic Response Group and the gang database he vowed to eliminate, and the mayor’s management report shows quality-of-life citations rose 12% to 220,802 in fiscal 2026. Seventeen democratic socialist officials and nominees signed a letter asking Tisch to end NYPD help for ICE operations and disband the SRG, or be dismissed. Rozario’s family has also pressed for her firing, yet Mamdani has stood by her at nearly every turn despite calls to fire her. “My vision is for the disbanding of the SRG,” he said, and he promised to deliver on it.

Patrick Hendry, president of the Police Benevolent Association, said any review should also cover the oversight board, and he called the announcement an attempt to appease the mayor’s base. A city comptroller report found that police-action claims were the most common legal claim against the city in 2025, with 6,082 filed and more than $113 million paid in settlements.