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Officer Charged in Akai Gurley Case Debated Reporting Gunshot, Officials Say

Officer Peter Liang, left, exiting State Supreme Court in Brooklyn after his arraignment.Credit...Michael Appleton for The New York Times

For four minutes, a New York City police officer who had just fired his gun into a darkened housing project stairwell argued with his partner over whether to tell their superiors about the shot.

“I’m going to be fired,” said the officer who pulled the trigger, Peter Liang, according to prosecutors’ account. Down a flight of stairs, the bullet from his gun had ricocheted off a wall and into a man’s chest, mortally wounding him.

The man, Akai Gurley, had done nothing more than enter the stairwell in the Louis H. Pink Houses, a housing project in East New York, Brooklyn.

On Wednesday, Officer Liang was charged in Mr. Gurley’s death after a grand jury handed up a six-count indictment against him. In laying out the allegations against the officer, including a charge of second-degree manslaughter, the Brooklyn district attorney, Kenneth P. Thompson, provided the most detailed account yet of what investigators believe happened inside 2724 Linden Boulevard on the night of Nov. 20.

While Mr. Thompson, in his remarks, never went so far as to say that the officer deliberately fired the weapon into the stairwell, he also took pains not to characterize the discharge as an accident, as the police commissioner, William J. Bratton, had hours after the shooting.

“We don’t believe that Officer Liang intended to kill Mr. Gurley,” he said. “But he had his finger on the trigger, and he fired the gun.”

Officer Liang fired, Mr. Thompson added, “when there was no threat.”

Advocates for police accountability welcomed the criminal charges and contrasted the grand jury’s result in Brooklyn — where Mr. Thompson, who took office last year, has championed criminal justice reform — with the decision reached two months earlier by a Staten Island grand jury in the police killing of Eric Garner. In that case, the grand jury found no basis for charges against an officer who used a chokehold, a tactic banned by the Police Department, to restrain Mr. Garner before his death.

The death of Mr. Gurley, who was black, inflamed anew the national protests over the use of deadly force by officers on unarmed black men, including Mr. Garner and Michael Brown, who was fatally shot in Ferguson, Mo., in August.

His death also fed calls to change police policy governing so-called vertical patrols in New York’s public housing developments, many of them plagued by high levels of violent crime. Vertical patrols, in which officers sweep hallways and staircases sometimes with guns drawn, have been a staple of policing the projects.

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Lawyers’ Statements in Akai Gurley Case

After Officer Peter Liang appeared in court over the fatal shooting of Akai Gurley, Kenneth P. Thompson, the Brooklyn district attorney, and Mr. Liang’s lawyer, Stephen C. Worth, spoke about the case.

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After Officer Peter Liang appeared in court over the fatal shooting of Akai Gurley, Kenneth P. Thompson, the Brooklyn district attorney, and Mr. Liang’s lawyer, Stephen C. Worth, spoke about the case.CreditCredit...Richard Perry/The New York Times

In his briefing on Wednesday, Mr. Thompson was careful to disclaim any political agenda, saying the process was focused on one officer, not the entire Police Department or any national debate.

“This case has nothing to do with Ferguson or Eric Garner or any other case,” he said.

But it inevitably became part of the national push for criminal justice reform and a defining episode for Mr. Thompson, who is black. Elected as a fresh voice of change, he is also the son of a police officer, and in his remarks on Wednesday, he sought to affirm both his mandate to remake the office and his obligation to work with law enforcement. He spoke of his obligation to Mr. Gurley, his obligation to Officer Liang and his obligation to the people of Brooklyn.

And he offered strong praise for the police in general and the bravery of the other officers who responded to reports of shots fired on Nov. 20 — believing they were facing a gunman before realizing the gunfire came from one of their own.

Minutes before, Officer Liang had been on a routine patrol. He approached the stairwell door with his gun in his left hand and a flashlight in the right. Pushing the door open with his right shoulder, he turned to his left and fired, Mr. Thompson said.

“In order to fire the gun, you need a certain amount of pressure to put on the gun,” Mr. Thompson said, suggesting he did not believe the shooting could be accidental.

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Akai Gurley’s Family Talk About the Case

Akai Gurley’s family has campaigned for justice since he was shot dead by Officer Peter Liang in November. They spoke after the court hearing, and in the weeks leading up to it.

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Akai Gurley’s family has campaigned for justice since he was shot dead by Officer Peter Liang in November. They spoke after the court hearing, and in the weeks leading up to it.CreditCredit...Michael Appleton for The New York Times

After backing out of the stairwell, the officers argued over whether to call in the gunshot; Officer Liang “refused,” Mr. Thompson said. Mr. Thompson did not offer evidence that Officer Liang and his partner, Officer Shaun Landau, immediately realized that someone had been struck. But he suggested they should have suspected as much, having heard the footsteps of Mr. Gurley and a companion, Melissa Butler, as they fled.

Once they stopped arguing and went downstairs, rather than giving Mr. Gurley medical aid or calling an ambulance, said Marc J. Fliedner, the chief of the district attorney’s civil rights division, Officer Liang “just stood there.”

The prosecutors’ account bolstered the charges against Officer Liang: second-degree manslaughter, second-degree assault and criminally negligent homicide, all felonies; and a misdemeanor count of reckless endangerment and two counts of official misconduct.

On the top charge of second-degree manslaughter, prosecutors must prove that Officer Liang consciously disregarded a substantial risk and was unjustified in doing so. At the arraignment, the prosecutor said he had ignored the Police Department’s training, which specifies that officers not place their finger on the trigger unless faced with a threat and ready to shoot.

Mr. Thompson would not answer questions about Officer Landau, including whether he would face any charges. Commissioner Bratton said both officers had turned in their guns and badges. Officer Liang is at home; Officer Landau is performing some duties, but not full police duties, Mr. Bratton said.

Speaking outside the courtroom, Officer Liang’s lawyer, Stephen C. Worth, said that by drawing his weapon before entering a dark stairwell in a high-crime neighborhood, the officer did what those in his position had long done.

“It’s been well known, police officers since time immemorial have been conducting verticals, and have had their weapons drawn when they felt it was appropriate,” Mr. Worth said.

The misconduct charges — alleging Officer Liang did not help Mr. Gurley after the shooting — were “a somewhat cynical attempt to cast Officer Liang in a bad light,” he said.

Officer Liang, the first New York City officer indicted in more than two years in connection with a fatal on-duty encounter, left his Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, apartment early Wednesday and turned himself in at a precinct station house in Downtown Brooklyn.

He stood silently in a gray suit and tie before Justice Daniel Chun in a Brooklyn courtroom packed with the news media and many of Mr. Gurley’s relatives and supporters.

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Demonstrators outside State Supreme Court in Brooklyn on Wednesday before the arraignment of Mr. Liang.Credit...Michael Appleton for The New York Times

Officer Liang pleaded not guilty, and Mr. Fliedner, the prosecutor, recommended that he be released on his own recognizance because he did not pose a significant risk to the community. Justice Chun approved the request.

Mr. Gurley’s relatives immediately protested. “My nephew’s murdered, but Peter Liang can come and go as he pleases?” said Hertencia Petersen, his aunt. “Where was the justice for my nephew Akai in the stairwell that night? Where was the dignity and respect to Akai Gurley? There was none.”

Kimberly Ballinger, Mr. Gurley’s partner, with whom he had a child, was more measured. “This is the first step in justice,” she said. “Now what we need is a conviction.”

Unlike the officers in the two earlier police killings, who justified using force to grand jurors, Officer Liang did not testify before the grand jury. His lawyer had advised Officer Liang not to testify because, Mr. Worth said, “it was clear there was an attempt to get an indictment all along.”

Mr. Thompson dismissed the assertion by Mr. Worth as well as questions from Chinese residents of Brooklyn about whether the officer’s race influenced the outcome.

Mr. Thompson has repeatedly cast himself as a reformer of law enforcement practices that he says disproportionately affect young men of color, and when the Gurley case came to him, he appeared intent on retaining it.

Reporting was contributed by Al Baker, James C. McKinley Jr., Benjamin Mueller and Jeffrey E. Singer.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 22 of the New York edition with the headline: Officer Debated Reporting Shot in Brooklyn Stairwell, Officials Say. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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