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[Syriel]

TL;DR Summary: Cop doing patrol in housing project. Doesn't use proper trigger control. Fires blindly into stairwell by accident. Kills a man. Is indicted for second degree manslaughter.


Original thread (when it happened):
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=937702

Indictment thread:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=989507

http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/201...il&utm_term=0_7260a5da5b-0e8d248c3b-132474733

The officer who fatally shot Akai Gurley in the in the stairwell of an East New York housing project last year did nothing for four minutes while Gurley bled to death, prosecutors said Wednesday.

The stunning news was revealed as Officer Peter Liang pleaded not guilty to manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, assault, reckless endangerment and official misconduct during the hearing on the indictment at Brooklyn Supreme Court.

Prosecutors also revealed that the shot that hit Gurley ricocheted off the concrete wall and hit the victim in the chest.

[...]

On the evening of his death, Gurley was visiting his girlfriend Melissa Butler, 27, at the housing at 2724 Linden Blvd. The two waited for an elevator and when it didn't come they decided to take the stairs, Butler told DNAinfo in November.

Liang, who faces up to 15 years in prison on the top charge, was conducting a vertical patrol with his gun drawn when he fired a single shot from a landing above the seventh floor, striking Gurley in the chest, the NYPD said.

Prosecutors said Liang was holding a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other and used his shoulder to push open the door into the stairwell.

As the door opened, he accidentally pulled the trigger of the gun while it was aimed down the stairwell, prosecutors said.

The round ricocheted off a concrete wall and landed in Gurley's chest.

Prosecutors said Liang fired his weapon, but didn't follow the sound of people scrambling down the stairs to check to see what had happened.

Rather, he retreated back into the 8th floor hallway where he stood for four minutes, refusing to call in the incident while arguing with his partner.

"He did not render aid, he did not perform CPR and he still did not use his police radio to report what was going on," said Marc Fliedner, the prosecutor at the hearing.

Instead Liang worried, "I'm going to be fired for this," according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors said they found no proof that Liang had texted his union representative after firing the shot, only evidence that the two officers had argued for at least four minutes.

When Liang finally walked down to the lower level, Gurley's girlfriend was trying to revive him and a neighbor was talking to paramedics on the phone; Liang still did nothing.

It took at least 10 minutes for an ambulance to arrive.

“The evidence will show that they did not render medical assistance to Mr. Gurley as they were trained to do in the police academy," Thompson said. "They were trained to give CPR.”

Now that the indictment is official, some are seeing it as NYPD finally being called to task and not getting away with murder. Others are claiming that it is simply racial scapegoating and that the only reason this officer is being made to account for his actions is because he's Chinese.

“We don’t want to be pushed around anymore, or picked on anymore,” Mr. Gim said. “We’re going to fight back.”

Mr. Gim and his lunchmates first met on WeChat after the death of Officer Wenjian Liu, who was shot in December. Now they are reaching out to the Chinese-language press, contacting lawyers to advise Officer Liang and planning a protest march in New York, a city with the largest Chinese population outside of Asia. An online petition opposing the indictment that was started in California by a member of the Chinese-American community has garnered more than 100,000 signatures.

“Peter Liang being Asian only means that all cops need to be held accountable, regardless of skin color,” said Cathy Dang, the executive director of CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities, an advocacy group in New York that works with Asian immigrants from several countries. “We should use this indictment as fuel for us to organize even harder to hold the white officers who’ve killed accountable.”

Councilwoman Margaret Chin, a Democrat who represents the Chinatown neighborhood, also called for Officer Liang to be indicted, saying the filing of charges would be a step toward reforming a police force that she said has unfairly targeted Asians as well as blacks and Latinos.

In some ways, Officer Liang’s case seems all too easy to slice along racial lines. Like Mr. Gurley, the shooting victim, the Brooklyn district attorney, Kenneth P. Thompson, is black; the judge who oversaw the officer’s arraignment, Justice Danny K. Chun of State Supreme Court, is Korean-American. After Justice Chun granted the prosecutors’ request to release the officer on his own recognizance, Mr. Gurley’s aunt spat out: “Asian judge!”

“We all know this is a rookie cop who doesn’t know all the ropes,” said Doug Lee, a former chairman of the Chinese Cultural Association of Long Island. “We all know he was in a dangerous environment. Why did he charge a rookie cop with manslaughter, with the obvious intent of throwing him in jail?” He added, “This is a vicious attack on the family, and this is a vicious attack on the Chinese community.”

Among the few who disagreed was Vivian Tan, 47, a former garment worker who was buying buns for Lunar New Year from Ms. Chen and, like her, spoke in Mandarin. “The light was off. It was just too dark. You couldn’t see anything,” she said of the dim stairwell in the Louis H. Pink Houses where the shooting occurred. “There’s no possibility that he killed him on purpose.”

Yet Ms. Tan would not go further. “It’s not discrimination,” she said. “It’s just unfair in general, because it was a mistake.”

Full story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/23/n...on=Footer&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=article

 

[JDSN]

Of course him being not white will make it easier for him to go to jail, I would like to think that maybe this is the shape of things to come and the police understanding that they will be under scrutiny for a while, but that implies aware of their own mistakes and thats a tall order.

 

[jordan0386]

Derelict of duty.

Is what it is.

 

[Cyan]

Yeah, if he was white I bet he'd be more likely to get off with no charges.

But uh... if you're holding marches wanting him to get off, you're attacking the wrong problem.

 

[Thebeardofknowledge]

found guilty of manslaughter

NEW YORK -- A rookie police officer who shot an unarmed man dead in a darkened public housing stairwell was convicted Thursday of manslaughter in a case closely watched by advocates for police accountability.

The courtroom audience gasped and Officer Peter Liang, who had broken into tears as he testified about the 2014 shooting of Akai Gurley, buried his head in his hands as the verdict came after 17 hours of jury deliberations. He had no comment after the verdict.

The manslaughter charge, a felony, carries up to 15 years in prison. While Liang awaits sentencing April 14, he was dismissed from the New York Police Department right after the verdict, department spokesman Peter Donald said.

more at the link
http://abc7ny.com/news/nypd-officer...ell-shooting-that-killed-akai-gurley/1196360/

 

[DragonSworne]

Dude was more worried about his job than the person he accidentally shot. The lack of empathy is infuriating.

Glad he was found guilty.

 

[Infinite]

Dude was more worried about his job than the person he accidentally shot. The lack of empathy is infuriating.

Glad he was found guilty.

Yeah fuck this guy. He called the Sergeant (or whoever ) on his cell phone first instead of radioing in that someone was just shot.

 

[Subtle]

I like the quote in the op saying he was a rookie cop so he should get off free. According to some idiots being new at the job means you can kill and be innocent.

 

[GeordieMark]

I sometimes wonder how many cops are actually racist, and how many are just woefully untrained and out of their depth when wielding firearms. It seems that there is a bit of both going on.

 

[Yoda]

He turned down the PBA lawyers and hired his own. He also clearly wanted to cover it up instead of getting the innocent man medical attention. I agree that the NYPD needs to be held accountable (mostly white cops) but their advocating that: non-white NYPD ought be above the law too... when NO COP should be.