[Hellgate] Adams and Tisch Promised Police Accountability. The Families of Two Men Killed by Police Are Still Waiting

Win Rozario was killed a year ago. Allan Feliz five years ago. The investigative and disciplinary process for the cops who killed them is still dragging on.

By Nick Pinto, Hellgate

On March 27 of last year, 19-year-old Win Rozario called 911 seeking medical assistance as he struggled with a mental health crisis at the Queens home he shared with his parents and brother. Two police officers arrived shortly after. Body-camera footage from the officers shows them escalating the situation so rapidly that within two minutes of walking in the door, they had shot Rozario to death in front of his younger brother and mother as she begged them not to.

The NYPD promised it would investigate the shooting, but more than a year later, the status of that investigation is unknown, shrouded behind an NYPD wall of silence.

"They treated him like he didn't matter and it's a miracle they didn't also kill my other son and wife who were there," Rozario's father said at a rally to commemorate the killing and call for action last week. "The NYPD is too powerful in this city, they are getting away with murder."

As Rozario's family demands answers and accountability for a deadly NYPD encounter, so is the family of Allan Feliz, who was killed by police more than five years ago. They are still waiting for NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch to rule on disciplinary charges against the cop who killed him. 

The long delays in investigating and adjudicating deadly police violence stand in stark contrast to the public statements of Mayor Eric Adams, who campaigned on promises of transparency and swift accountability for police misconduct, and of his police commissioner, who has presented herself as taking police discipline accountability seriously after an especially anarchic era for the NYPD.

When Hell Gate asked Mayor Eric Adams in October 2023 about ongoing delays in the department's disciplinary case against the officers who killed Kawaski Trawick, another young man shot to death by police in his home seconds after they opened his door, he said disciplinary cases need to move faster. "I want this to be a hallmark of this administration, that we need to shorten the time," he said. "When we make mistakes in the police department, we have to live up to them. We have to own them. We don't need to be covering them up. And I want to make sure we start creating a culture of turnover evidence, making sure we shorten the time that it takes."

The mayor echoed that promise at his State of the City address a few months later. "When a civilian brings a complaint, we must act more swiftly to resolve the matter," he said. "Right now, some internal discipline cases in our police department can take as long as a year to resolve, if not more. That is far too long. This year, the NYPD will further reform their internal case process to cut that time in half—setting stricter timelines so that cases do not languish for months."

Why then, more than a year after Rozario's killing, is the NYPD's investigation still pending? What even is the status of that investigation? When might we expect it to conclude? We asked all of these questions to the NYPD, which simply answered, "The incident remains under investigation by the Force Investigation Division."

Feliz's case is also seemingly languishing without resolution. 

In October 2019, then-Sergeant Jonathan Rivera shot 31-year-old Allan Feliz to death in his car in the Bronx, and was subsequently cleared of wrongdoing by an NYPD internal investigation. In 2023, after a long delay in receiving evidence from the NYPD, the Civilian Complaint Review Board substantiated departmental charges of assault and menacing against Rivera. After another long delay in serving the CCRB's charges against Rivera, the NYPD finally held a disciplinary trial last November, and in February, the department's deputy commissioner for trials, who acts as a sort of internal police judge, found Rivera guilty and recommended he be fired. 

All that remains is for NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch to act—to either accept or reject the recommendation. But more than a month later, Tisch has taken no final action on the case, and though Feliz's family and their supporters had urged her to finally resolve the matter by the end of March, there's no indication of when she will make a determination. 

What's the hold up? When will Tisch—who has pledged to take police accountability more seriously than her predecessors—act on the case? We asked the NYPD. "In regard to the [sic] Lt Rivera," came the answer, "the disciplinary process remains ongoing."

Given his stated interest in speeding up NYPD accountability, how does the mayor feel about how long his department is taking to resolve these two cases? We tried to ask him at his press conference today, but weren't allowed a question. We then tried again, asking his communications staff if Adams is satisfied with the speed of the NYPD resolution of the Rozario and Feliz cases, and if not, what he's doing about it. We're still waiting to get an answer.

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