New York City Police Officer Peter Liang was in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn on Wednesday afternoon — looking at 15 years in prison not so much for what he did, but for what he didn’t do.
That, and for what grand juries on Staten Island and in far-away Missouri didn’t do, as well — indict cops who, in the process of lawfully doing their duty, caused the deaths of black men.
Months of turmoil followed the Staten Island and Missouri episodes — instigating, if not actually causing, the assassination of two NYPD cops — and one thing seems perfectly clear in the Liang case: Brooklyn DA Kenneth Thompson isn’t having any of that in his borough.
And thus Liang, 27 and on the job less than a year, was arraigned Wednesday on a mind-boggling array of charges, given the facts of the case.
Facts that, basically, boil down to these:
Liang and his partner, another rookie, were patrolling the Louis Pink Houses — one of the city’s most crime-plagued housing projects — last Nov. 20.
They began a descent into a pitch-black stairwell (persistent lighting problems are one reason the Pink Houses are so dangerous). Then 28-year-old Akai Gurley and his girlfriend, Melissa Butler, entered the stairwell at least one flight below the cops.
Liang, meanwhile, had drawn his service weapon — perfectly permissible under NYPD rules, and not at all unreasonably given the circumstances.
And this is where what the young cop didn’t do — follow the NYPD’s strict firearms training regimens — resulted in a wholly avoidable tragedy.
The pistol discharged; a bullet, apparently a ricochet, struck Gurley in the chest; he collapsed and died in the stairwell a short time later.
Police Commissioner William Bratton termed Gurley “wholly innocent,” and his death an accident.
He could be expected to say that, of course, but on the merits he doesn’t seem to be wrong.
(The medical examiner called it a “homicide,” which doesn’t mean murder — though most people think it does, and its irresponsible use by people who surely know better has empowered more than one provocateur.)
But it is Thompson whose opinion matters most here — and he called it manslaughter, among other things. His hand-picked grand jury agreed, and so Peter Liang’s journey through the criminal system began Wednesday afternoon.
Yet, given the immunities state law grants to police officers who perform their duties in good faith, it seems unlikely that it will end, after appeals, with anything other than nuisance convictions.
Indeed, the manslaughter charge seems particularly preposterous when Liang’s only overt act appears to have been putting his finger inside his pistol’s trigger guard. This is an egregious violation of safety protocols, but hardly deserving of a 15-year prison sentence.
Still, the indictments are only just, right? Especially after Staten Island and Ferguson?
The charges, of course, should stand or fall on their merits.
That is, outcomes in other cases, in other jurisdictions, should have no bearing whatsoever on what a grand jury is asked to do in Brooklyn.
To suggest that a problematic outcome in say, Staten Island, requires corrective action in Brooklyn — irrespective of facts, circumstances and controlling statutes — simply stands the rule of law on its head.
Thompson hasn’t made that suggestion out loud, to be sure, but the usual choristers have been in full throat on the theme for months.
And they are quite wrong.
Yes, one must support the process; far more often than not it produces proper — if not always satisfying — outcomes.
And it beats hell out of the alternative — say, unbridled lawlessness of the sort that devastated Ferguson after the grand jury finding in the Michael Brown case.
But that’s theory.
In the real world, passions intrude and politics are always present. This often produces miscarriages of justice, sometimes of the sort that appeared to be unfolding in the Brooklyn courthouse Wednesday.
Moreover, as the case proceeds, at least one essential question needs to be considered: Why was it necessary for Peter Liang and his partner to be in that pitch-dark Pink Houses stairwell in the first place?
Answer: Crime doesn’t come to cops, cops come to crime.
In New York City, maybe not so quickly from now on.