Vol. 80/No. 18      May 9, 2016

 

Convicted NY cop gets no jail in death of
Akai Gurley

 
NEW YORK — Police officer Peter Liang was sentenced to five years probation and 800 hours of community service April 19. Liang was convicted of manslaughter in February for the shooting death of Akai Gurley in a stairwell at the Louis Pink Houses complex in Brooklyn, Nov. 20, 2014.

Liang’s conviction was the first of a cop here in a fatal shooting in over a decade. It carried a potential sentence of up to 15 years. But State Supreme Court Judge Danny Chun reduced the jury’s manslaughter verdict to criminally negligent homicide and said “incarceration is not necessary.” Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson had recommended that Liang serve no jail time.

Liang, with his gun drawn was on patrol with partner Shaun Landau, claims that it went off accidently. The bullet ricocheted, striking Gurley, who was with his friend Melissa Butler a floor below, in the heart. Neither cop rendered aid to the dying man. Butler and a neighbor called for an ambulance.

“Another Black man has been murdered by the hands of the Police Department and the officer is not being held accountable,” Gurley’s aunt Hertencia Petersen told a crowd outside the court building after the sentencing.

Nearby about 100 people, mostly Chinese, carried signs saying Liang was being scapegoated because he is Chinese American. “This was just very bad luck,” said Alex Li. “He didn’t have enough experience for duty like this.”

Some other workers share this view. Many are glad that Liang was found guilty, but point out that Staten Island cops killed Eric Garner with a chokehold in 2014 have never been charged.

“It’s a bad set of circumstances, sad on both ends,” Thomas James, who is Black, told the Militant outside the courthouse, “but Gurley was not doing anything wrong.”

“We are outraged that Peter Liang has escaped accountability for killing Akai Gurley,” said a joint statement initiated by CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities and signed by other Asian and Chinese American organizations. “As grassroots organizations working with Asian/Chinese Americans, we continue to stand with the family of Akai Gurley and other innocent victims of police killings to hold all police officers accountable, regardless of race.”  
 
 
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