A policeman who shot and killed a Bronx man due to mental health issues should be fired from the force, according to the city’s civilian oversight panel.
The final decision on the recommendation – the most serious that can be issued by the Civilian Complaint Review Board – may ultimately be the decision of newly appointed Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch.
Officer Derek Bernard was one of two policemen who shot Raul de la Cruz, who was armed with a knife, shortly after responding to his father’s 311 call for help during the son’s mental-health episode in 2023.
The second officer resigned from the NYPD before the CCRB released its report on him, making the potential findings on his actions controversial.
But the CCRB recently handed down its most serious recommendation for Bernard: termination.
And while there’s still a long road ahead in the disciplinary process — including an NYPD challenge, more CCRB hearings and an administrative trial — before Tisch will make a final decision, Cruz and the lawyers representing him in a federal lawsuit against the city And officials are already praising the recommendation.
“We cannot afford another death or near-death of a New Yorker with a mental disability at the hands of the NYPD,” said Cruz’s attorney Maureen Bellusio, who works at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest.
As for Cruz, 44, he said, “I still don’t feel well.
“But I feel good being a part of this trial because I know it’s a step toward getting justice.”
Cruz spent several months in the hospital after the shooting, which left him in hemorrhagic shock due to excessive blood loss. Many of his organs were also damaged – and some were completely removed – due to gunshot wounds to his chest and leg.
In March 2023, Cruz was visiting family in the Bronx when he began to feel anxious.
According to Cruz’s lawsuit, filed a year after the shooting, his father dialed 311 to ask for help for his son, whom he told the dispatcher was going through a mental-health crisis and suffering from schizophrenia.
His father asked the 311 operator not to send the police – which made Cruz feel particularly frightened and distraught – and to call medical professionals instead.
Three NYPD officers arrived at the scene outside an apartment building, where they found Cruz and his father Recorded by police body-worn camera Trying to calm my distressed son.
After officers yelled the word “hands” in English and Spanish, Cruz pulled out a kitchen knife.
His father tried to calm his son one last time, but Cruz walked away and seconds later Bernard and Officer Nicholas Trupia shot him.
The two shot a total of seven times and then handcuffed Cruz as he lay face down on the sidewalk, covered in blood.
According to his federal lawsuit, in addition to massive blood loss, Cruz spent four weeks in the intensive care unit and underwent multiple surgeries, where doctors removed a kidney and his spleen and parts of his pancreas and small and large intestines.
“Instead of dispatching trained health professionals to help Mr. de la Cruz, NYPD patrol officers were dispatched to the scene and arrived minutes later,” the lawsuit says, adding that none of the officers spoke Spanish and Could not communicate with father or son.
“I was worried something like this might happen,” Cruz’s father told Gothamist Just a few days after the shooting. “So I called 311. …I didn’t go asking for help just to kill him.”
“I’m not violent,” Cruz told the outlet last spring. I was not angry. I was scared.”
The incident occurred almost exactly a year before a similar shooting in Queens, where a mentally ill teenager, Vin Rosario, 19, was shot and killed by officers responding to an emergency call Related to mental health issues.
Advocates have long criticized the NYPD’s deployment of personnel in situations involving people experiencing mental crisis and have called for greater police training and an increased response from mental-health professionals.
Police records show Bernard joined the force in 2012 and completed a four-module training course titled “Responding to People in Crisis” in 2019.
The NYPD has asked the CCRB to reconsider the recommendation, which could delay its progress through the administrative courts and even lead to its dismissal.
A police spokesperson would only comment that the disciplinary process was ongoing.
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