Killing of Akai Gurley
On February 10, 2015, Liang was indicted by a grand jury (seven men and five women)[1] for manslaughter, assault, and other criminal charges (five counts total)[2] after members were shown footage of the unlit house and the 9mm Glock used in the shooting.
[5][6][7] On March 28, 2016, prosecuting Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth P. Thompson recommended to Kings County Supreme Court Judge Danny Chun that Liang serve only house arrest and community service for his sentence.
[8] On April 19, 2016, Justice Chun sentenced Liang to five years probation and 800 hours community service after downgrading his manslaughter conviction to criminally negligent homicide.
[9] Akai Kareem Gurley (c. 1986 – November 20, 2014) was born in Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, and moved to New York as a child.
[11][12] Peter Liang (born c. 1987), a Hong Kong American, had less than 18 months of experience with the New York City Police Department (NYPD) at the time of the shooting.
Liang emigrated to the United States as a child to Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, with his parents and grandmother; he also has a younger brother in college.
[16] Police Commissioner Bill Bratton reported that there had been a spike in violence in the neighborhood over the preceding months with two homicides, two robberies, and four assaults.
[24] At the time the gun was discharged, the stairwell on the 8th floor was pitch black due to a broken light bulb.
A grand jury declined to indict Neri on charges of criminally negligent homicide, declaring the event an accident based on testimony that he had unintentionally fired.
[32][33][34] New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton declared the shooting to be an accident and that Gurley was a "total innocent.
[37][21] When asked by reporters, Mayor Bill de Blasio did not take any sides in this issue, commenting that it was a "tragedy" to Gurley's family and requesting respect to the court's verdict.
On the issue of NYPD patrolling, he considered it essential to public safety; he also characterized the notions of Liang being a scapegoat[16] and police brutality cases somehow being linked together to be non-existent.
[41] On February 5, 2016, while Liang's trial was underway, two NYPD officers were wounded while conducting vertical patrols at a housing development in the Bronx.
Thousands walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan's Chinatown in April to demand the charges to be dropped, as had been done in the past with white officers.
[51][46] Joseph Lin, a real estate agent and activist, had helped to organize the protests due to feeling that Asian Americans had been too passive with no political voice, saying that, "If he's a black officer, I guarantee you Al Sharpton will come out.
[54] Gurley's death was one of several police killings of African Americans protested by the Black Lives Matter movement.
[49] Delores Jones-Brown, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, speculated to The Atlantic that Liang would have avoided conviction had he rendered aid to Gurley, while jurors later reported that the force required for them to pull the trigger on a police-issued pistol led them to believe that Liang's testimony was not completely true.
[67][9][68] Assistant District Attorney[69] Joseph Alexis claimed the killing wasn't an accident and that Liang chose to place the finger on the trigger.
However, one of Liang's defense attorneys, Rae Koshetz, argued that what had happened was a tragedy, not a crime, because the bullet bounced off the wall and coincidentally hit Gurley.
[70] The defendants also argued that Liang pulling out his gun was still considered in line with protocol because the "lack of lighting is commonly perceived as a sign of criminal activity.
[72] In August 2016, New York City reached an agreement with Gurley's family for $4.1 million, settling a lawsuit brought by Kimberley Ballinger, Akaila's mother.
[75] The incident received national and international coverage, in part due to the recent police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and killing of Eric Garner in Staten Island.
