BGOL News: Police shooting in Brooklyn Pink Houses ruled homicide (Asian cop is freed)

[playahaitian]

Police shooting in housing project ruled homicide

http://news.yahoo.com/examiner-rules-nyc-police-shooting-homicide-160642948.html

NEW YORK (AP) — Prosecutors should charge a police officer who fatally shot an unarmed man in a dark public housing stairwell, elected officials said Monday after the medical examiner announced that the death was ruled a homicide.

City Councilwoman Inez Barron and Assemblyman-elect Charles Barron met with officials in the Brooklyn district attorney's office on Monday. Afterward, Charles Barron told reporters he thought the shooting of Akai Gurley last week warrants a criminal charge for Officer Peter Liang.

He said Liang's use of a police weapon "was reckless endangerment, it was criminally negligent homicide."

Whether charges are filed would be up to Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson, who has called the shooting "deeply troubling" and said it warrants "an immediate, fair and thorough investigation." His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

In ruling the death a homicide, the city's medical examiner's office said its finding that Gurley's death "resulted in full or in part from the actions of another person or persons," a gunshot wound to the torso, "does not imply any statement about intent or culpability."

"... The evaluation of the legal implications of this classification is a function of the district attorney and the criminal justice system," the medical examiner said in a statement.

Liang and his partner, both rookie officers, were patrolling a pitch-dark stairwell with flashlights late Thursday when Gurley was shot, police said.

Police said the officers walked down the stairs onto an eighth-floor landing. Gurley and his girlfriend opened a stairwell door one floor down after giving up on waiting for an elevator. Police said Liang, patrolling with his gun drawn, fired without a word and apparently by accident, hitting Gurley from a distance of about 10 feet.

Charles Barron said the officers were "well trained" to keep their gun in their holster when there was no apparent danger. "When you pull your gun out and there's no danger, then you have violated (New York Police Department) policy. And if you discharge that weapon, you did it deliberately because you were scared."

Instead, he said, the officer should have pulled out only his flashlight and spoken to Gurley and his girlfriend.

In addition, he said another NYPD policy was violated when the two rookies were sent out on patrol, instead of an experienced officer who could guide a rookie.

Police Commissioner William Bratton previously called the shooting in Brooklyn's gritty East New York neighborhood an apparent accident that claimed a "totally innocent" life.

Several hours after the news conference in front of the district attorney's office, a group of about a dozen protesters calling for Bratton's dismissal showed up at the New York University law school where the commissioner was to speak about urban crime.

A few minutes into his speech, they stood up, turned their backs to Bratton, and chanted "Hands up, don't shoot" and "Bratton must go!"

The commissioner dismissed them, saying, "That's the entertainment for the evening."

After the event, Bratton told reporters he didn't pay attention to anything Charles Barron said, calling the outspoken former city Councilmember an "incendiary device."

Gurley's death comes at a sensitive time in New York. On Staten Island, a grand jury is weighing whether to bring criminal charges against another officer in a chokehold death.

City police often conduct "vertical patrols" inside public housing by going from roofs down staircases that sometimes are havens for crime. Bratton has said the patrols are needed, and the development where Gurley was shot had recently seen a shooting, robberies and assaults.

Liang, 26, has been placed on modified duty. Under standard policy, police internal affairs investigators won't be able to question him until prosecutors have decided whether to file criminal charges.

Mayor Bill de Blasio met with some of Gurley's relatives Friday evening. His office declined to comment on the medical examiner's findings.

 

[BDR]

The BK DA will indict the cop that brotha ain't no joke. He's already indicted a few cops

He's gotten off a lot of black men who was wrongfully convicted

He's put in a policy to decline to prosecute weed arrest for small amounts.

This is what voting in local does it is way more important that national elections

Folk need to realize local elections affect your day to day lives..

DA Thompson is doing excellent work

 

[NightMare Paint]

The BK DA will indict the cop that brotha ain't no joke. He's already indicted a few cops

He's gotten off a lot of black men who was wrongfully convicted

He's put in a policy to decline to prosecute weed arrest for small amounts.

This is what voting in local does it is way more important that national elections

Folk need to realize local elections affect your day to day lives..

DA Thompson is doing excellent work

Say it again brotha. Feels better reading this today.

 

[Z MONSTER]

No way dude should of had his gun out. I'm suprised they didn't lie and say he was "clearing" the stairwell and was looking for a suspect when the victim open the door and came at him in a threatening manner.

 

[playahaitian]

The BK DA will indict the cop that brotha ain't no joke. He's already indicted a few cops

He's gotten off a lot of black men who was wrongfully convicted

He's put in a policy to decline to prosecute weed arrest for small amounts.

This is what voting in local does it is way more important that national elections

Folk need to realize local elections affect your day to day lives..

DA Thompson is doing excellent work

Say it again brotha. Feels better reading this today.

^^^

they don't hear you fam...

been trying to tel folks for years

 

[Black Radical]

The BK DA will indict the cop that brotha ain't no joke. He's already indicted a few cops

He's gotten off a lot of black men who was wrongfully convicted

He's put in a policy to decline to prosecute weed arrest for small amounts.

This is what voting in local does it is way more important that national elections

Folk need to realize local elections affect your day to day lives..

DA Thompson is doing excellent work

This!!!!!

No way dude should of had his gun out. I'm suprised they didn't lie and say he was "clearing" the stairwell and was looking for a suspect when the victim open the door and came at him in a threatening manner.

Timothy Stansbury was killed in brooklyn under identical circumstances and the cop wasn't indicted, didn't lose his job, and went on with his life. City paid 2 mil to the victims family.

 

[Coldchi]

how many years does one get for "criminal negligent homicide"? 2-3 years.
cuz im sure thats what they'll probably charge the cop with. he'll probably do less than a year with good behavior.
and get out on probation.
either way......it still wont be due justice.

 

[Black Radical]

how many years does one get for "criminal negligent homicide"? 2-3 years.
cuz im sure thats what they'll probably charge the cop with. he'll probably do less than a year with good behavior.
and get out on probation.
either way......it still wont be due justice.

He will not be convicted of anything. He'll say it was an accident and he didn't mean it. He may he indicted and request a bench trial. He will not do a day.

 

[RepostKing]

He will not be convicted of anything. He'll say it was an accident and he didn't mean it. He may he indicted and request a bench trial. He will not do a day.

Its called negligent homicide

 

[megahorn]

Any jail time is a start, cops are not even brought up on charges for their crimes.

 

[playahaitian]

In Brooklyn, 2 Young Men, a Dark Stairwell and a Gunshot

For two flights down a darkened Brooklyn stairwell, Akai Gurley descended, mortally wounded by gunfire but apparently unaware that the single shot had come from a police officer’s 9 millimeter weapon.

A few paces down and fleeing the boom of gunfire, his girlfriend, Melissa Butler, turned when she no longer heard him behind her, according to an account provided by a senior police official who was briefed by investigators. Retracing her steps, she found Mr. Gurley, 28, near the fifth-floor landing and rushed to a family friend on the fourth floor of the housing project to call 911.

“My neighbor says her boyfriend has been shot,” the friend told the dispatcher, according to the police official, who had viewed the call logs. “Call the cops.”

Upstairs, two officers already knew who had fired the shot. A gun in the hand of one young officer, Peter Liang, had gone off one time, the round flying — and possibly ricocheting — down the dark, cinder-block stairway.

Within hours of the shooting late Thursday night, the Police Department had conceded a grave error. The mayor and William J. Bratton, the police commissioner, visited the family home on Friday to apologize. The following day, protesters assembled outside the 75th Precinct station house in the East New York. And community leaders, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, drew parallels to the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Missouri, and the killing of Eric Garner by police on Staten Island.

The shooting focused scrutiny on everyday tactics used by officers in housing projects, where rooting out entrenched violence has been a departmental priority, even as basic questions about the death remained unanswered: Had Officer Liang, surprised by a figure in the shadows below, reflexively squeezed the trigger, or had he merely lost his grip as he opened the door to the stairs?

“The cop who was standing behind Officer Liang doesn’t know what happened; the girlfriend doesn’t know what happened,” said the official. “There is a distinct possibility that Officer Liang doesn’t quite understand what happened.”

From different corners of Brooklyn, the lives of Mr. Gurley and Officer Liang, two young men separated in age by a single year, collided amid the faint shadows of the stairwell inside 2724 Linden Blvd., one of the buildings in the vast the Louis H. Pink housing project.

For Mr. Gurley, the stairs, even in their sorry state, offered the best alternative to chronically malfunctioning project elevators. For Officer Liang, their darkness presented a threat.

The fatal shooting, described as accidental by Commissioner Bratton, is the subject of investigations by the Police Department and the Brooklyn district attorney, Kenneth P. Thompson. Officer Liang has not been interviewed yet by the police, which is standard in cases that could be presented to a grand jury.

Without talking to the officer involved, police officials said they could offer only theories as to what occurred in the stairwell.

What is known, police officials said, is that Officer Liang took out his service weapon before entering the unlit stairwell, a not-uncommon practice by officers patrolling inside the city’s housing projects. He held a flashlight. He opened the eighth-floor door, followed by his partner, also a relatively new officer and whose name has not been released. The gun went off as Mr. Gurley entered the landing one floor below, trailing his girlfriend.

Before the shooting, Mr. Gurley, had been on his way up in life, friends said. Childhood hopes of a music career were behind him, his good looks brought modeling work, and his determination had recently landed him something more steady after several months of searching: a job offer from the city housing authority.

He told friends that he was relieved to have a reliable paycheck to help provide for his 2-year-old daughter, Akaila, and her mother, Kimberly Michelle Ballinger.

“He was happy that he was about to go to work, he was relieved,” said Mr. Dente Crosby, 28, a friend of several years.

He was a familiar face around the Red Hook Houses in Brooklyn where he lived with his daughter and her mother. Rose Quintana, 48, who lived in Mr. Gurley’s building there for six years, said she was on good terms with the mother of his daughter.

She added that a few years ago, the building was filthy and home to delinquents whom she worked with housing authority officials to oust. Though she did not know Mr. Gurley well, she appreciated him for never causing trouble.

“The problems that we had in this building was never that young man,” she said of Mr. Gurley.

Still, his life took him between two of New York City’s more dangerous pockets: his home in the Red Hook Houses and the Pink Houses in East New York where Ms. Butler lived. Mr. Gurley, known by his nickname “Bless,” had in recent years shied away from the streets, acquaintances said.

He was getting it all together,” said a woman who knew Mr. Gurley but requested anonymity because she did not want to be connected to the case. “He was becoming an actor, he was going to school for modeling and he was going to work for the city,” she said.​

The sort of patrol being conducted by Officer Liang and a partner, a so-called vertical patrol starts from the roof of a building and descends through its stairways, is considered essential to policing the projects. But they are seen by officers on daily patrol as among the most perilous assignments. Before starting one, officers radio special codes — 10-75V or 10-75I — to alert dispatchers in case anything happens.

The patrols became increasingly common over the summer as Commissioner Bratton flooded public housing with officers — many, like Mr. Liang, on overtime — to stem a rise in shootings. In the Pink Houses in East New York, recent gun violence, including two homicides, has drawn more officers.

Often the department’s least experienced officers are sent.

“This is a result of poor in-street field training; you literally had the blind leading the blind out there,” said another high-ranking police official.​

Early in his tenure, Commissioner Bratton promised to provide better guidance for rookie officers in high-crime neighborhoods, though the new program is not expected to start until January. Better training would not stop officers from drawing their weapons, the officials said, nor could it entirely prevent them from firing accidentally. In most years, the department logs about two dozen inadvertent gunshots, most during weapons maintenance. In 2012, a Bronx man died from what the police said was an accidental shooting after he collided with an officer responding to a robbery with his gun drawn.

On Sunday, a patrol car sat outside Officer Liang’s home in Bensonhurst. A neighbor who spoke to his family said Mr. Liang, 27, who lives with his parents, had barely left his room since the shooting. The neighbor, Fred Chan, 58, said his wife spoke to Mr. Liang’s mother late Saturday. She told him that Mr. Liang had barely eaten since the shooting. “Peter can’t stop thinking about what happens,” Mr. Chan said, relaying what he had been told about the conversation in Cantonese. “He would just say, ‘It was so dark. I was so scared.' ”

Yuri Castillo, 19, heard the shot from the stairwell, and minutes later heard Mr. Gurley’s girlfriend, Ms. Butler, weeping in the fourth floor stairwell.


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/24/nyregion/police-tactic-scrutinized-after-accidental-shooting.html

 

[Give Me 3ft.]

The BK DA will indict the cop that brotha ain't no joke. He's already indicted a few cops

He's gotten off a lot of black men who was wrongfully convicted

He's put in a policy to decline to prosecute weed arrest for small amounts.

This is what voting in local does it is way more important that national elections

Folk need to realize local elections affect your day to day lives..

DA Thompson is doing excellent work

​

 

[playahaitian]

http://nypost.com/2016/04/19/nypd-c...medium=site buttons&utm_campaign=site buttons

NYPD cop Peter Liang dodges prison for killing Akai Gurley

The former rookie cop convicted in the 2014 shooting death of an unarmed man in a housing-project stairwell dodged prison Tuesday — as his victim’s angry kin warned that “justice will be served one way or another.”

Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun largely followed the no-jail recommendation of Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson in sentencing ex-Officer Peter Liang to five years probation and 800 hours of community service for the death of Akai Gurley.

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Chun also downgraded the jury’s finding on manslaughter to criminally negligent homicide.

There is “no evidence, either direct or circumstantial, that the defendant was aware of Akai Gurley’s presence and therefore disregarded any risk [to him],’’ Chun explained.

The lesser charge is still a felony and keeps Liang off the force. It carried a maximum of four years in prison, while manslaughter would have meant up to 15 years.

Liang and his partner were doing a sweep of an apartment building at the crime-riddled Pink Houses in East New York around 11:15 p.m. on Nov. 20, 2014, when a steel door slammed, apparently startling him.

He had his service-issued .9mm Glock out, and it went off. The bullet ricocheted off the wall and struck Gurley, who was on the landing below, in the chest.

Gurley’s aunt, Hertencia Petersen, raged after court, “So you’re telling me it’s OK for a black man in America, good ol’ America, to get murdered, and these officers who took an oath to serve and protect are not being held accountable?

“But don’t worry, what goes around, comes around,’’ she said. “Sooner or later, Peter Liang, if not him in his lifetime, someone in his family, is going to feel our pain.”

Before his sentencing, the soft-spoken Liang apologized to both Gurley’s girlfriend and the mother of his 3-year-old daughter.

“I’m not a man of many words. The shot was an accident,’’ the 28-year-old insisted.

But the girlfriend, Melissa Butler, who desperately tried to perform CPR on the dying Gurley, told Liang in an emotional victim-impact statement, “Akai took his last breath and died in my hands. I’m suffering while you still have your life.’’

Akai Gurley’s girlfriend, Melissa Butler
Kimberly Ballinger, the mother of Gurley’s daughter, added, “I will never forget the words of [Mayor] de Blasio when he said [Gurley] should still be alive.’’

More than 200 extra cops — including those from the NYPD’s counterterrorism unit — were stationed outside the courthouse as throngs of supporters and protesters screamed and waved signs during and after the proceeding.

Thompson, who was attacked from both sides over the case, shocked court observers and didn’t show up. He later vowed in a statement to appeal the downgraded charge.

Liang showed no emotion throughout the proceeding.

The former cop was quickly whisked off afterward in a car escorted by a police cruiser with its siren on.

He had prepared for the worst — getting together money for bail, a source said, “He was relieved he didn’t have to go to jail,’’ another source said, adding that the former cop was set to spend time with his family, including his parents and wife.

His wife attended court Tuesday — the first time she was present for any of the proceedings, the source said.

Liang lawyer Paul Shechtman said his client now has to hash out with his parole officer where he will do his community service.

He said he and Liang have already talked about him working with children.

“I don’t think any of us have expected a better outcome,’’ Shechtman told The Post.

Still, he said they would appeal the conviction.

Prosecutors had argued that Liang breached department protocol by having his finger on the trigger. Liang and Landau also spent several minutes after the shooting arguing over who would call in the shooting instead of rushing to Gurley’s aid.

Both Liang and Landau testified that they didn’t jump to the dying man’s aid because they lacked proper CPR training.

The Police Academy instructor who was supposed to have taught them the life-saving technique has since been stripped of her badge and gun while the department probes the allegation.