Santo de la Cruz called 311 on March 26, 2023 to seek treatment for his son Raul, who suffers from schizophrenia.
Instead, he watched as two NYPD officers arrived and shot Raul de la Cruz seven times. The 42-year-old man narrowly escaped death, but after weeks in the ICU he was left disabled and mentally traumatized.
Raul Delacruz filed suit against the city, NYPD leadership and the officers who fired the shots on Tuesday, the one-year anniversary of the shooting.
The lawsuit, which has not been previously reported, was filed in federal court in Manhattan. The group argues that sending police to respond to mental health crises is illegal because it leaves mentally ill people without equal access to the city’s emergency response programs. It also seeks an injunction prohibiting the city from “continuing to enforce its current police-run mental health crisis response policy.”
Now, one year and one day after Raul Delacruz was shot and killed, police say they shot and killed a teenager who called 911 himself during a “mental crisis.”
Mentally ill New Yorkers and their advocates are calling on the city to reform the way it responds to calls for mental health crises.
Raul Delacruz was diagnosed with schizophrenia about six years ago. His mother was also diagnosed, according to the complaint. His lawyers claim that despite the pleas of his family, officers who responded to the call mishandled the situation, which escalated into bloodshed.
In response to questions about the shooting, a police spokesperson said recruits are taught how to recognize mental illness, how to communicate effectively and use “appropriate tactics” to deal with situations. The NYPD declined to comment on the matter.
“Even before the police arrived, I believed they were going to arrest me and torture me,” Raul Delacruz wrote in Gothamist this week. “It would have been helpful if someone who wasn’t the police had come, someone who could have helped me with my mental health issues…I’m not violent. I wasn’t angry. I was scared.”
According to the complaint, his family immigrated from the Dominican Republic when he was 29 years old. His formal education ended in the fifth grade, and when he was 39 he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He is currently 44 years old.
Last March, he was visiting his father in the Kingsbridge neighborhood of the Bronx. The elder Dela Cruz, who sells fruit on the Grand Concourse, said he became concerned about his son’s mental state.
At approximately 9:45 a.m. on March 26, 2023, Santo Delacruz called 311 to request psychiatric treatment because her son began to show signs of distress. Santos told an interpreter in Spanish that Raul was a “white man” and that he felt like the police were persecuting him, according to the complaint. He specifically asked dispatchers not to send police and instead asked for medical providers to treat his son before anything went wrong because he had a knife.
According to internal police records obtained by Gothamist, the 311 call was immediately determined to be an “in-progress assault” by an “emotionally unstable person with a weapon,” and the NYPD was dispatched. The 911 operator described Raul as “violent” and “in possession of a knife.”
“Neither 311 nor 911 operators dispatched mental health crisis teams to assist,” the complaint states.
At 10:07 a.m., two police officers arrived and found Santo de la Cruz standing outside the apartment, still on the phone. His son was inside.
Police body-worn camera footage released by the NYPD shows the footage muted for the first minute before the camera is activated. Officer Derek Bernard was then heard asking Santo de la Cruz if his son had a knife. He could not be understood by his father, who did not speak English.
“Who is he to you?” Bernard asked before several more exchanges where police tried to determine what was going on.
“Spanish?” Bernard said.
“S-Spanish,” Raul de la Cruz answered. He can’t speak English either.
“Stay there, okay?” Bernard said.
“Como?” Raul de la Cruz asked, not understanding the prompt.
Neither officer spoke Spanish. Bernard waved his hand in the air and said in Spanish, “manos,” or “hand.”
Raul de la Cruz then appears and asks Bernard how many cops are coming. He takes a knife out of his jacket pocket. His father rushes up to him, trying to defuse the increasingly chaotic exchange. The video shows him trying to shake the knife from his son’s grip while he is on the phone with the operator.
During this time, both officers pointed their guns at him and repeatedly yelled, “Drop the knife!”
Raul de la Cruz began walking quickly toward the officers, still holding a knife. Officer Nicholas Trupier fired five shots at him, and Bernard fired two shots, New York City police said. Raul Delacruz fell to the ground and lay on his side.
The entire event lasted 28 seconds.
“After they finally stopped shooting at Mr. Delacruz, [the officers] and handcuffed him while he lay unconscious on the ground,” the complaint states. “Mr. Santo de la Cruz believed his son was dead.”
Santo Delacruz called 911 for help that day, NYPD Sergeant John Chell said at a news conference that afternoon. It wasn’t until the next morning that Gothamist learned he had called 311 for medical attention.
“I was worried something like this would happen,” he told Gothamist in Spanish that day. “That’s why I called 311…I didn’t go there to get help just for him to get killed.”
Bernard joined the NYPD in 2012, according to police records. According to the same records, Torpia, who fired five shots at Raul Delacruz, had been in the military for less than two years.
Bernard and Trupia had received NYPD training on responding to people in crisis, according to police records.
Santo Delacruz said he went to see his son at St. Barnabas Hospital after the shooting and was turned away by police. Raul de la Cruz was arrested while in the ICU. Hospital officials told Gothamist that the NYPD controls who comes in and out of the patient’s room.
Santo, 67 at the time, was told by phone that her son had a “10% chance of survival” and would not survive the night. Malinda Van Dalen, an attorney with the nonprofit New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, represented Santo and secured visitation rights with her son.
Doctors removed one of Raul’s kidneys during his five-week stay in the hospital, causing injuries that included “a perforated intestine and complete loss of his spleen,” according to the lawsuit. A bullet also passed through his leg.
According to the lawsuit, he now has diabetes as a result of having one of his kidneys and part of his pancreas removed. He walks with a cane.
In the weeks after the shooting, family and friends protested outside the NYPD’s 52nd Precinct, demanding that police release the name of the officer who shot and killed Raul de la Cruz.
His younger brother Victor held up a sign that read in Spanish: “Who will protect us from the police?”
On April 4, 2023, the New York City Police Department denied Gothamist’s Freedom of Information Act request for audio recordings of Santo’s 311 calls and dispatch records from 311 to 911, arguing that releasing the information would compromise the investigation. . They also denied a request for body-worn camera footage from Raul’s attorney, Van Daalen.
The NYPD released the footage on YouTube nine months after the shooting. The ministry did not send the letter to Raul’s family or lawyer.
The NYPD responds to about 15,000 mental health emergency calls each month, according to city data. For most New Yorkers and their loved ones, 911 is the gateway to receiving care during a mental health crisis.
B-HEARD is the city’s non-police mental health crisis call pilot program and handles a small portion of those calls. There are a total of 37 mental health social workers at B-HEARD.
Most New Yorkers in Raul de la Cruz’s position would not survive.
On Wednesday, Wynn Rosario was standing in the kitchen with his mother when police said he himself became distressed and called 911. Officers arrived on the second floor of his home in Ozone Park, Queens.
According to the NYPD’s account of the incident, the boy retrieved neon green scissors from a drawer, and officers used a Taser on him. Rosario’s mother then scrambled to pick up her son, and she “accidentally knocked the Taser off her son’s body,” police officials said. NYPD Sergeant John Chell said the boy picked up the scissors again and “attacked” police. The police shot him dead.
“It is heartbreaking that as Mr. Dela Cruz seeks justice from the courts, yet another New Yorker experiencing a mental health crisis is shot and killed by police,” Van Dalen said in a statement to Gothamist. Stated. Non-police response teams de-escalate dangerous systems and save lives by providing people with the help they need. ”
This story has been updated with new information.
