A New York City police officer texted his union representative before reporting he accidentally had fatally shot an unarmed black man in a darkened Brooklyn stairwell, the New York Daily News reported on Friday.
Citing anonymous sources, the Daily News reported that rookie NYPD officer Peter Liang and his partner were unreachable for more than six-and-a-half minutes after the shooting of 28-year-old Akai Gurley on Nov. 20.
The cops’ commanding officer and an emergency operator attempted to contact them after receiving a 911 call from a neighbor but were unable to, the sources told the Daily News.
The paper reported that Liang and his partner, Shaun Landau, reported an accidental discharge when they were again reachable on their radios.
A spokesman for the union disputed the Daily News report in an email to BuzzFeed, saying none of its representatives who serve the area received a text from Liang.
A grand jury is set to review the case and decide whether to indict the officers involved. This shooting is one of several recent incidents involving NYPD officers fatally wounding black men.
On Wednesday, a grand jury in New York decided not to indict the cop who killed Eric Garner, another unarmed black man, by employing the use of a chokehold.
The Daily News said the NYPD declined to comment.
Not to worry, this officer will be let go as well by the Grand Jury.
Jeebers, when will equal justice prevail?
He doesn’t have anything to worry about. The victim was black. The prosecutor has his back.
I was confused by this at first. They were unreachable for 6.5 minutes, but that doesn’t mean the time between the shooting and the officers calling in the shooting was 6.5 minutes. A few minutes may have passed before residents called in the report of shots being fired and then a few more minutes while dispatch was figuring out which cops had been dispatched to that building. Meanwhile, Mr. Gurley lay dying for the crime of being black in a stairwell while these two jackasses covered their ass. It’s possible Mr. Gurley’s life could’ve been saved if the two had immediately called for an ambulance. Yeah, I think we’ve reached the boiling point.
The head of that union is a real piece of work.
I feel like I’m back in 1965 when I watched the training as a young man for the bus desegregation campaign in Alabama.