FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 12, 2024
Contact: Sophie Ellman-Golan | sophie@jfrej.org

NEW YORK -- Following the announcement that there will be no disciplinary charges for the NYPD who shot and killed Kawaski Trawick in 2019, Leo Ferguson of Jews For Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) released the following statement:

Today the NYPD announced that there will be no discipline — no consequences of any kind — for the officers who murdered Kawaski Trawick.

Kawaski was an artist — someone who came to New York to fulfill his dreams like so many others. He was living in supportive housing — a place that was supposed to be safe. And officers Thompson and Davis entered his home illegally and shot him dead in his own kitchen while he was cooking dinner.

Under Mayor Eric Adams, the NYPD remains a corrupt paramilitary mob; above the law, sneering at every attempt at democratic oversight and actively frustrating the legal accountability process; protecting their own at our expense. In the Trawick case, the NYPD simply refused to hand over evidence to the CCRB until the statute of limitations ran out, and then cited this technicality as their excuse for not taking action against officers Thompson and Davis.

The NYPD will stop at nothing to protect the members of its little blue clubhouse even if that means letting manifestly dangerous men roam the streets of New York, armed and granted a license to kill with impunity.

What happened to Kawaski could happen to any of us. And thanks to Eric Adams and NYPD Commissioner Caban it will certainly happen again. When they say they care about public safety, don’t believe them. We keep us safe, because they certainly won’t.

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Jews For Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) is a 6,000-member grassroots organization and the home of New York’s Jewish Left. For over 30 years, JFREJ members have organized alongside our neighbors to transform New York from a playground for the wealthy few into a real democracy, free from all forms of racist violence.