By MICHAEL WILSONNOV
Two police officers prepared to
enter the pitch-black eighth-floor stairwell of a building in a Brooklyn
housing project, one of them with his sidearm drawn. At the same time, a man
and his girlfriend, frustrated by a long wait for an elevator, entered the
seventh-floor stairwell, 14 steps below. In the darkness, a shot rang out from
the officer’s gun, and the 28-year-old man below was struck in the chest and,
soon after, fell dead.
The shooting, at 11:15 p.m. on
Thursday, invited immediate comparison to the fatal shooting of an unarmed man
in Ferguson, Mo. But 12 hours later, just after noon on Friday, the New York
police commissioner, William J. Bratton, announced that the shooting was
accidental and that the victim, Akai Gurley, had done nothing to provoke a
confrontation with the officers.
An officer with his gun drawn
in a so-called vertical patrol in the Louis H. Pink Houses in East New York,
Brooklyn, in 2013.Public Housing Patrols Can Mean Safety or Danger NOV. 21,
2014
Police officers conduct a
top-to-bottom patrol in the Pink Houses in Brooklyn. The city’s 334 housing
projects have 2,000 police officers assigned to them.Policing the Projects of
New York City, at a Hefty PriceDEC. 26, 2013
The encounter, glimpsed in a
still from a video obtained by The New York Daily News.Man’s Death After
Chokehold Raises Old Issue for the PoliceJULY 18, 2014
A sidewalk memorial on Staten
Island where Eric Garner died after a confrontation with the police.Death of a
Man in Custody Adds Fuel to a Dispute Over a Policing StrategyJULY 20, 2014
Indeed, as the investigation
continued into Friday night, a leading theory described an instance of simple,
yet tragic, clumsiness on the part of the officer. Mr. Gurley was not armed,
the police said.
William J. Bratton, the New
York police commissioner, said that the fatal shooting of an unarmed man by a
police officer in Brooklyn Thursday was accidental and that the victim was a
“total innocent.” Video by AP on Publish Date November 21, 2014. Photo by
Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times.
The episode promised to bring
scrutiny to a longtime police practice of officers drawing their weapons when
patrolling stairwells in housing projects.
The shooting occurred in the
Louis H. Pink Houses in the East New York neighborhood. The housing project had
been the scene of a recent spate of crimes — there have been two robberies and
four assaults in the development in the past month, two homicides in the past
year, and a shooting in a nearby lobby last Saturday, Mr. Bratton said.
Additional officers, many new
to the Police Department, were assigned to patrol the buildings, including the
two officers in the stairwell on Thursday night, who were working an overtime
tour.
Having just inspected the roof,
the officers prepared to conduct what is known as a vertical patrol, an
inspection of a building’s staircases, which tend to be a magnet for criminal
activity or quality-of-life nuisances.
Both officers took out their
flashlights, and one, Peter Liang, 27, a probationary officer with less than 18
months on the job, drew his sidearm, a 9-millimeter semiautomatic.
Officer Liang is left-handed,
and he tried to turn the knob of the door that opens to the stairwell with that
hand while also holding the gun, according to a high-ranking police official
who was familiar with the investigation and who emphasized that the account
could change.
Kimberly Michelle Ballinger,
the domestic partner of Akai Gurley, left, picking up their daughter at a day
care center on Friday. Credit Uli Seit for The New York Times
It appears that in turning the
knob and pushing the door open, Officer Liang rotated the barrel of the gun
down and accidentally fired, the official said. He and the other officer both
jumped back into the hallway, and Officer Liang shouted something to the effect
that he had accidentally fired his weapon, the official said.
Mr. Gurley had spent the past
hours getting his hair braided at a friend’s apartment. Neighbors said he had
posted photos of himself on an online site for models, featuring his tattoos,
his clothing and his muscular frame.
He and his girlfriend, Melissa
Butler, waited for an elevator on the seventh floor, but it never came, so they
opened the door to the dark stairwell instead. An instant later, the shot was
fired. Mr. Gurley and Ms. Butler were probably unaware that the shot came from
a police officer’s gun.
“The cop didn’t present himself, he just shot
him in the chest,” Janice Butler, Ms. Butler’s sister, said. “They didn’t see
their face or nothing.”
Mr. Gurley made it two flights
down, to the fifth floor, where he collapsed. Melissa Butler called 911 from a
lower floor, the official said.
Officer Liang and his partner
came upon Mr. Gurley and called in the injury on the police radio, saying it
was the result of an accidental discharge, the official said.
Commissioner Bratton called Mr. Gurley “a
total innocent” and said the shooting was “an unfortunate accident.” The victim
was not engaged in any activity other than trying to walk down the stairs, Mr.
Bratton said.
Mayor Bil de Blasio was also
quick to offer his condolences to Mr. Gurley’s family. “This is a tragedy,” he
said.
About 6:45 p.m. on Friday, the
mayor, accompanied by his wife, Chirlane McCray, and Mr. Bratton, arrived at
the Red Hook East Houses to visit the home of Mr. Gurley’s domestic partner,
Kimberly Michelle Ballinger, 25.
They spent a little more than 10
minutes there and left without making any comment.
Earlier, Mr. Bratton said that
whether an officer should draw his weapon while on patrol when there was no
clear threat was a matter of discretion.
At left, William J. Bratton,
the New York police commissioner, and Mayor Bill de Blasio, accompanied by his
wife, Chirlane McCray, arriving at the home of Mr. Gurley to pay condolences.
Credit Uli Seit for The New York Times
“There’s not a specific
prohibition against taking a firearm out,” he said, adding, “As in all cases,
an officer would have to justify the circumstances that required him to or
resulted in his unholstering his firearm.”
The president of the
Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, Patrick J. Lynch, declined to say anything
about the officer, but commented on the conditions of stairwells in projects,
including the setting of the shooting.
“The Pink Houses are among the
most dangerous projects in the city, and their stairwells are the most
dangerous places in the projects,” he said. “Dimly lit stairways and
dilapidated conditions create fertile ground for violent crime, while the
constant presence of illegal firearms creates a dangerous and highly volatile
environment for police officers and residents alike.”
The Brooklyn district attorney,
Kenneth P. Thompson, issued a statement that questioned the condition of the
lighting in the stairwell.
