NY police officer faces 15 years in prison for deadly shooting

Officer Peter Liang was found guilty Thursday of manslaughter and official misconduct charges.

Kimberly Ballinger, the domestic partner of Akai Gurley, is pictured leaving court after Liang was found guilty of manslaughter. The police union said the jury came to the “absolutely wrong decision”, the AP said. Gurley, an unarmed father, was walking up a dark stairwell in a Brooklyn apartment complex when he was shot by NYPD officer Peter Liang.

He buried his head in his hands as the jury returned their verdict. The officer left the courthouse without speaking to reporters.

It wasn’t until the closing arguments that prosecutors suggested that Liang, a Chinese-American, must have assumed that the noise that startled him came from another person and that he fired a shot on objective. “It’s a awful tragedy, but it’s not a crime”.

Nevertheless, Gurley’s family and friends were in court, and hugged and cried cathartic tears upon hearing the verdict. They huddled in a group embrace, crying, swaying and offering words of relief and thanks.

Last year, Ken Thompson, the Brooklyn district attorney, said that that his office conducted “a thorough investigation” into the shooting before a grand jury returned a six-count indictment charging Liang with second-degree manslaughter as well as negligent homicide, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and misconduct. “When that happens, they get hurt and the public gets hurt”. In this case, the prosecution argued that Liang’s decision to to unholster his gun was “reckless and deadly choice”.

A defence lawyer for Liang, Robert Brown, said he would appeal and warned that the verdict would put officers in danger. NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton immediately declared the shooting an accident, and called Gurley a “total innocent”. During the trial, prosecutors allowed jurors to pull the trigger of Liang’s Glock 9mm off to the side of the jury box.

“We have to work constantly to do them the right way, and that means in a way that’s respectable to the residents of that development, in a way that is communicative, and understands the needs of the development”, Mr.de Blasio said, explaining how vertical patrols would work under his new model.

Since Landau was a probationary officer – with less than two years on the job – the NYPD does not have to state a reason for the firing, a law enforcement source said.

“I just want to say thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone”, Gurley’s mother, Sylvia Palmer, said after the officer’s conviction. “I’m sorry we were in that courtroom at that point”. As News 12 has previously reported, the department cut Liang within minutes of his conviction.

“This has to do with who are we here in Brooklyn”. The outcome stood in stark contrast to many other cases around the country in which police have been accused of killing unarmed black men and boys. Landau was not criminally charged in Gurley’s death, and he received immunity for his testimony.

The two officers didn’t even know how to administer CPR to the dying Gurley, which indicates further lack of training.