Forget Ferguson.
This right here is the real deal.
Unlike Mr. Brown, this guy hadn't just tried to rob a store and assault the manager.
Unlike Mr. Brown, this guy didn't grab up a police officer and grab up that officer's gun.
No. This guy was taking the stairs in a building (something the author does all the time).
The police are saying that this was an accident. This is unacceptable. Unless they can show that there was either a crime in progress or that the police had reason to believe an armed person had entered the stairway after or on the way to commit a crime, there is
no reason for this officer to have had his gun drawn and chambered.
Currently there is talk about how he can be fired because he was on probation as a new cop. But this here looks very much like criminally negligent homicide. He was walking in a stairway where unarmed residents come and go. Again. Short recordings that a crime was occurring or that a suspect had fled into the stairwell, this guy should be seeing charges.
A panicked rookie cop in a pitch-black housing project stairwell killed an unarmed man with a single gunshot to the chest as the officer fumbled around in the darkness with a flashlight and a handgun.
The fatal shooting, which officials described as a tragic accident, happened during a vertical patrol late Thursday — months after the superintendent of the Brooklyn development asked NYCHA to fix the stairwell lights
And note:
I shot him accidentally,” the devastated cop confessed to his colleagues. His partner Landau never pulled his weapon from its holster.
Bratton and de Blasio agreed the shooting was a terrible mistake — although Liang had yet to tell his story to police.
Never pulled his weapon. This means there were no suspects that they were looking for or a crime they were responding to. Otherwise Landau would have had his gun drawn covering their back.
