DA Overcharged Liang, Then Overcompensated

Police Officer Peter Liang had just been indicted on charges that included manslaughter for the fatal shooting of Akai Gurley nearly 14 months ago, as an Assistant District Attorney laid out a case of a young officer inadvertently firing his weapon and then going into full panic mode, first refusing to call in the incident to his Sergeant and then not attempting to give the stricken man CPR treatment as he lay dying in a fifth-floor stairwell of a troubled Brooklyn housing project.

As we walked from the courtroom where Officer Liang would be convicted exactly a year later to District Attorney Ken Thompson’s office for a press conference on the case, a veteran police reporter shook his head and said, “Some guys just aren’t meant to be cops.” He spoke with emotional weariness rather than anger, his words conveying that the rookie officer had the bad luck to find himself in a tough situation and responded in the worst possible way, producing the worst possible result.