The NYPD’s head of administrative trials is recommending no punishment for two police officers involved in the shooting death of 32-year-old Kawaski Trawick in his Bronx apartment in April 2019, according to a draft ruling obtained by THE CITY.
Trawick, a dancer and personal trainer, was Tased and shot four times by Police Officer Brendan Thompson within two minutes of Thompson and his partner Herbert Davis arriving at Trawick’s door. At the time, Trawick was living in a supportive housing building that provides services for substance abuse or mental health challenges.
In her draft decision dated Sept. 20, Deputy Commissioner Rosemarie Maldonado faulted the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) for not filing misconduct charges against the two officers until after a statute of limitations for doing so had expired.
The time limit on filing the charges against the cops was two years but the board missed it by nearly five months — mostly because of NYPD delays in turning over key evidence, a timeline contained in the draft decision shows.
That lapse elevated the bar of proof required for a finding of guilt against the officers from merely identifying violations of NYPD guidelines to proving their actions constitute crimes, wrote Maldonado.
This meant instead of proving Thompson used excessive force by shocking and shooting Trawick — who called 911 himself after being locked out of his apartment — CCRB prosecutors had to prove he committed first or second degree assault, she reasoned.
“CCRB’s failure to preserve the statute of limitations hijacked this NYPD disciplinary trial and distorted it into a quasi-criminal proceeding where the evidentiary threshold focused on the Penal Law instead of Patrol Guide compliance,” Maldonado wrote “As such, whether Respondent Thompson’s actions violated the Department’s Force and EDP [Emotionally Disturbed Person] guidelines is moot because the charges were not served by the statutory deadline.”
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