A New York City police lieutenant who shot and killed a man after pulling him over for not wearing a seatbelt should be fired, a police administrative judge recommended in a rare ruling that will ultimately go to Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch for a final decision.
The officer, Lt. Jonathan Rivera, was a sergeant on Oct. 17, 2019, when he and two other officers were patrolling near Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. One of the officers, Lieutenant Rivera’s partner at the time, saw that the driver of a passing Volkswagen Atlas, Allan Feliz, did not appear to have his seatbelt on.
When they pulled him over and ran his driver’s license, they found several open warrants for failing to pay fines for spitting and littering, and they moved to pat him down. That is when Mr. Feliz, 31, tried to drive away. As Lieutenant Rivera’s partner struggled to pull Mr. Feliz out of the car, Lieutenant Rivera shot him with a Taser, then lunged into the Volkswagen and threatened to shoot him. When the car lurched forward, Lieutenant Rivera shot Mr. Feliz once in the chest with his firearm, killing him.
Lieutenant Rivera argued that he believed Mr. Feliz was about to run over one of his fellow officers, but Rosemarie Maldonado, deputy police commissioner of trials who oversees disciplinary hearings, said she did not believe him when he testified during an internal trial last November.
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