Miami-Dade
Police Officer Arrested for Misconduct
A Miami-Dade police officer has
been arrested after he crashed his patrol car and lied about it in a police
report, officials said.
According to police, Officer
Joshua Zacarias was arrested for official misconduct following an internal
investigation.
The arrest affidavit states
that Zacarias was arrested at 8:40 Tuesday morning at 10680 NW 25th Street.
He was booked into the
Miami-Dade jail at 9:28 a.m. and had his bond set at $5,000.
According to the arrest
warrant, Zacarias had apprehended four people involved in a robbery and was
driving back to the Miami Lakes station when he crashed his patrol car.
When he was confronted about
the damage, he claimed someone keyed his car at his apartment complex in
Hallandale Beach, the warrant said. He also lied in the report, the warrant
said.
"It is disheartening when
an officer has betrayed his fellow officers and the community that he swore to
protect. The Miami-Dade Police Department does not condone conduct that
undermines the trust of the community and investigates all allegations of
misconduct with professionalism and thoroughness," Miami-Dade Police
Director J.D. Patterson said in a statement.
More information is expected to
be released later this afternoon.
Trial
set for 2 Orlando police officers charged with battery
A May 4 trial date has been set for the two
Orlando Police Department officers who were charged with battery in two
separate and unrelated incidents. The State Attorney's Office filed the charges
earlier this month.
A trial date has been set for
the two Orlando police officers who were charged with battery in two separate
and unrelated incidents earlier this month.
The State Attorney's Office on
Jan. 16 announced the charges. Officer Chase Fugate was initially charged with
two misdemeanor charges of battery from an incident on June 14, 2014.
Fugate has also been charged
with perjury (misdemeanor), said Angela Starke, public information officer for
the State Attorney's Office.
Office William Escobar faces
two counts of battery and two counts of perjury, both misdemeanors, stemming
from a March 15, 2014, incident.
The trial date for both
officers has been set for May 4, with a pretrial conference scheduled for April
16.
Both Fugate and Escobar are
sworn officers with the Orlando Police Department. The Orlando Police
Department issued a statement after the charges were filed, stating both
officers were suspended with pay until an internal investigation is completed.
New
York City Police Officer Is Said to Be Indicted in Shooting Death of Akai
Gurley
By AL BAKER and J. DAVID
GOODMAN
A New York City police officer
was indicted Tuesday in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man in a
Brooklyn public housing complex stairwell in November, several people familiar
with the grand jury’s decision said.
Officer Peter Liang, 27, who
had been on the force for less than 18 months, was patrolling a darkened
stairwell at the Louis H. Pink Houses in East New York when he fired a single
shot that fatally struck the man, Akai Gurley, as he walked downstairs. Less
than 12 hours after the shooting, Police Commissioner William J. Bratton called
Mr. Gurley, 28, “totally innocent” and characterized the shooting as an
“unfortunate accident.”
A grand jury impaneled last
week decided it was a crime. The jurors indicted Officer Liang on several
charges, including second-degree manslaughter, said a law enforcement official,
who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the indictment had yet to be
unsealed. The other charges are criminally negligent homicide, reckless
endangerment, second-degree assault and two counts of official misconduct, the
official said.
A formal announcement in the
case was expected on Wednesday by Kenneth P. Thompson, the Brooklyn district
attorney who, in just over a year in office, has drawn considerable attention with
his move to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana and his
aggressive review of decades-old convictions.
The killing of Mr. Gurley
followed fatal encounters between the police and unarmed black men — Michael
Brown in Ferguson, Mo.; Eric Garner on Staten Island — and, while the
circumstances of Mr. Gurley’s death were different, it tore into already
fraying relations between law enforcement and minority communities around the
country. Mr. Gurley’s name joined others shouted at demonstrations pressing for
policing and criminal justice reforms.
The indictment of Officer
Liang, who is Chinese-American, is the first in more than two years involving a
fatal encounter between a civilian and a police officer in New York City. Two
months ago, a grand jury on Staten Island declined to bring criminal charges
against Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the case of Mr. Garner after he died as
officers tried to arrest him for selling loose cigarettes on the street.
Reform advocates and some
elected officials welcomed word of the indictment. Mayor Bill de Blasio, who
campaigned on improving police-community relations but who has been battered by
revolts among officers, offered a more muted response.
“We urge everyone to respect
the judicial process as it unfolds,” the mayor said, calling Mr. Gurley’s death
“an unspeakable tragedy.”
The Brooklyn district attorney
declined to comment on the indictment before it was unsealed. Officer Liang’s
lawyer, Stephen C. Worth, said he would address the charges after his client
was arraigned on Wednesday.
From the start, the
circumstances of Mr. Gurley’s death diverged sharply from the kind of standoffs
that preceded the deaths of Mr. Garner and Mr. Brown, an unarmed black teenager
fatally shot by an officer in Ferguson, whose death in August set off the
initial wave of protests against aggressive police tactics last year.
There was no encounter or words
exchanged between Officer Liang and Mr. Gurley before the fatal shot, the
police said.
Officer Liang and his partner,
Officer Shaun Landau, entered an eighth-floor stairwell in the Pink Houses at
about 11:15 p.m. on Nov. 20. Officer Liang had his 9-millimeter gun drawn,
according to the police, not uncommon for officers walking the interiors and
rooftops of public housing complexes in so-called vertical patrols. His partner
kept his gun holstered.
At the same time, Mr. Gurley
and his girlfriend, Melissa Butler, entered the seventh-floor stairwell, 14
steps below.
According to the police
account, almost as soon as Officer Liang opened the door, his gun went off. He
immediately moved back onto the rooftop, the door closing in front of him and
his partner. Officer Liang then uttered words to the effect that he had
accidentally fired, the police said at the time, citing the partner’s account.
Ms. Butler ran from the sound,
but she turned when she noticed Mr. Gurley was no longer following. She found
him near a fifth-floor landing. Then she rushed to the apartment of a friend,
who dialed 911.
“My neighbor says her boyfriend
has been shot,” the friend told the dispatcher, according to a police official
who viewed the call logs. “Call the cops.”
Legal experts and former
prosecutors said the case was different from that of Mr. Garner in several
basic respects. For one, while officers are given broad discretion to use
deadly force, the police have described Officer Liang’s actions as
unintentional.
Unlike Officer Pantaleo, who
took the stand on Staten Island to tell grand jurors why he moved to restrain
Mr. Garner, — an encounter captured on video — Officer Liang did not take the
stand in the Brooklyn case, the law enforcement official said.
“What’s he going to say?” said
James A. Cohen, a law professor at Fordham University Law School and expert in
criminal procedure. “ ‘It was dark; I was scared.’ That’s not going to hold up
in front of a grand jury.”
In seeking a top charge of
second-degree manslaughter before the grand jury, prosecutors had to
demonstrate probable cause that Officer Liang was aware of the risks posed by
brandishing his gun, that he consciously disregarded them and that it was
“substantial and unjustifiable,” according to the penal code.
I could believe a gun went off
accidentally if it hit a wall or a foot. What are the statistics on these
patrols? Why have a gun drawn...
I just got into work and
haven't had time to read all 179 comments. When I received firearms training in
the Midwest these four rules were...
If indicting the officer is
appropriate, criminally negligent homicide is the most serious charge that
should be leveled. Manslaughter is...
“That’s bold,” Bernard E.
Harcourt, a professor at Columbia Law School, said of the manslaughter charge.
Experts said that to
demonstrate probable cause for one of the lesser charges, criminally negligent
homicide, prosecutors had to show only that Officer Liang failed to perceive
the risks that his actions posed.
The case went to the grand jury
last week, the law enforcement official said. The process moved swiftly, like
one would see with most felonies presented to the secret panels, which vote
only on whether a trial should follow.
Legal scholars have long
contended that district attorneys — who are elected in New York City — have
great control in the grand jury process: They dictate the pace of the
proceedings and who testifies and in what order, and decide what charges are
presented.
But it is exceedingly rare for
the indictment of an officer for a fatal, on-duty encounter, to lead to a
conviction. The two most recent examples — the deaths of Ramarley Graham in
2012 and of Sean Bell in 2006 — resulted in no convictions. The burden of proof
to convict — beyond a reasonable doubt — is far higher at trial, and defense
lawyers can present their own best case and cross-examine witnesses.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, who had
called for an indictment since Mr. Gurley’s death, contrasted the outcome in
Brooklyn with the one on Staten Island.
“This is the tale of two cities,”
Mr. Sharpton said, echoing the campaign slogan of Mayor de Blasio. Mr. Sharpton
said he had spoken to Mr. Thompson on Tuesday about the grand jury decision.
“He wanted to be fair to the policeman and to Akai Gurley, and this is what the
grand jury decided,” Mr. Sharpton said about the conversation.
On Tuesday evening, a man who
answered the door at Officer Liang’s house declined to comment. In the Pink
Houses, a flier hung in the lobby of the brick building where Mr. Gurley was
shot, advertising a benefit rally related to his death.
“He was a good guy,” Margarita
Robles, 40, said of Mr. Gurley as she stood outside the building. “Would I say
this is justice? Yes.”
Another resident, Kamala Crew,
43, a seamstress, said she sympathized with the officer. “He was a rookie, and
he’s not accustomed to this lifestyle,” she said. “This is so sad, I know cops
that did worse than this and got away scot-free.”
Reporting was contributed by
Benjamin Mueller, Marc Santora, Nate Schweber, Jeffrey E. Singer and Vivian
Yee.
Niles
patrolman suspended
By RAYMOND L. SMITH , Tribune
Chronicle
NILES - A city police officer
received a 30-day suspension and lost vacation and compensation time after an
internal affairs investigation found that the officer accosted a city resident
by grabbing his collar, shoving him
against his patrol car and threatening to kill him
