But then, he said, he went to look for the bullet, heard cries and found the wounded Gurley and his distraught girlfriend.
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“This officer was indicted not because of what is happening elsewhere in the country but because of what happened in that stairwell”, he said. Further, the prosecution argued Liang was reckless with his weapon and violated his duty to serve and protect by failing to perform CPR on the victim.
The defense said the shooting was an accident, not a crime. “This bad verdict will have a chilling effect on police officers across the city because it criminalizes a tragic accident”, he said.
And Ed Mullins, the president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, said that Police Commissioner William J. Bratton, “who so often brags of the evolution of policing, now needs to suspend the efforts of vertical patrol and re-evaluate his policy”. Mayor Bill de Blasio said changes are already in the works.
“The rookie officer was patrolling the stairwell with his gun drawn in 2014 when he fired. We support our police officers, but when innocent men are shot and killed through an act of recklessness, we have to hold whoever is responsible accountable, whether that is a police officer or not”, Thompson said.
Liang was also convicted of official misconduct, a misdemeanor.
To be convicted of second-degree manslaughter, prosecutors had to prove that Liang recklessly caused Gurley’s death.
Liang is due to be sentenced on April 14.
The shooting happened in a year of debate in the United States about police killings of unarmed black men. He said Liang would appeal. As News 12 has previously reported, the department cut Liang within minutes of his conviction. From point one, the partner threw him under the bus.
The officer’s supporters have said Liang, who is Chinese American, is being made a scapegoat for previous injustices.
The NYPD officer who shot and killed an unarmed man in a stairwell was convicted of manslaughter Thursday by a Kings County jury.
At issue is the inherently conflicted role of the prosecuting attorney. But Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Daniel Pantaleo in Staten Island and Timothy Loehmann in Cleveland, all white officers, have not been brought up on charges. “There’s an inherent conflict of interest….” It’s been closely watched by advocates for police accountability. During its two days of deliberation, the jury asked for three whiteboards, the NYPD’s firearm and tactics guide, and blank sheets of paper.
The decision by Thompson to prosecute police brutality cases is in line with his past experience as a federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of NY.
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Juror 9, who has police officers in his family, said he’s fired guns plenty of times before, and it wasn’t hard for him to pull the trigger.
