Lets Decompress As We Consider The Akai Gurley

Kings County, Brooklyn dis­trict attor­ney Kenneth Thompson began to impan­el a grand jury to decide the fate of Officer Peter Liang, the man who shot and killed 28-year-old Akai Gurley. 

Gurley was killed when Officer Peter Liang and his part­ner, also new to the force, were patrolling a pitch-dark stair­well with flash­lights late Thursday, police said. Gurley, 28, was leav­ing his girlfriend’s apart­ment after she had braid­ed his hair, accord­ing to the girl­friend, who is not his daughter’s mother.

Police said the offi­cers walked down the stairs onto an eighth-floor land­ing when 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.

Community Organizations includ­ing the grass­roots orga­ni­za­tion BK Nation, has demand­ed that Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner William Bratton bring things to an end:
BK Nation through a Representative Kevin Powell said ‚“We do not believe this was an acci­dent, but a pat­tern of reck­less dis­re­gard for the lives of young men of col­or in our community”.
Regardless of what hap­pens this will anger some groups. Residents and local African-American groups argue this case is just one more exam­ple of the low val­ue Police place on the lives of young men of col­or, par­tic­u­lar­ly black men.
Police Agencies and their sup­port­ers will point to the tremen­dous risks offi­cers face dai­ly as they patrol high crime Housing projects across the nation.
Both sides of the argu­ment has mer­it. Police have demon­strat­ed scant regard for the lives of Young men of col­or, and African Americans in particular.
On the oth­er hand it is incred­i­bly nerve-rack­ing for offi­cers who patrol these crime rid­den hous­ing projects. After all no one deserves to be killed sim­ply because they went to work.
Regardless of the NYPD’s pro­to­col to it’s offi­cers regard­ing how patrols should be done mis­takes were made which may be direct­ly or indi­rect­ly attrib­ut­able to the death of Akai Gurley.
Questions remain.
♦ Why two junior offi­cers were on patrol by themselves?
♦ Why were they doing ver­ti­cal patrols,( going from ground to roof, if they were told not to, as alleged?
♦Why did offi­cer Liang have his gun drawn?
♦Did the open­ing of the door below the offi­cers con­sti­tute enough of a fear fac­tor to cause Officer Liang to believe he and his part­ner were in danger?
♦ If Officer Liang’s part­ner did not un-hol­ster his weapon , it could rea­son­ably be con­strued that any per­ceived fear Liang had may not have been anchored in reality.
Despite all of this, and the tragedy of the loss of this young man and the trau­ma to his fam­i­ly , I believe it would be anoth­er tragedy were he to be indicted .
With what we know so far about this shoot­ing, it would appear that Officer Liang and his part­ner may have ignored Department guide­lines. Liang may not have the nerves or judge­ment required of a good offi­cer, but I see no intent to harm.
When every aspect of what we know is con­sid­ered, tak­ing police side into con­sid­er­a­tion, Officer Liang may need retrain­ing, or even more severe depart­men­tal penal­ty to include but not con­fined to dismissal.

Despite the harm some offi­cers do, we must be mind­ful that Cops face incred­i­ble risks while we sleep at nights. We need to remind our­selves that Officers are peo­ple too, they make mistakes.
It would be trag­ic were the law to pun­ish this offi­cer in light of what we know, because of some of the actions of oth­er police officers.
Lets not throw out the baby with the bath-water.