NEW YORK — When New York City police officer Peter Liang sat down in a Brooklyn court on Wednesday, a companion leaned over and said quietly, “Breathe. Relax.”
Liang, who appeared visibly shaken, was in court to plead not guilty to a six-count indictment in the shooting death of 28-year-old Akai Gurley this past November.
Assistant District Attorney Marc Fliedner read out the charges: manslaughter in the second degree, criminally negligent homicide, assault in the second degree, reckless endangerment in the second degree, and two counts of official misconduct.
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“There’s no agenda,” he said, asserting that the grand jury’s decision to indict Liang was in no way a reaction to events late last year in Staten Island and Ferguson, Missouri — where two grand juries declined to indict two white police officers in the deaths of two unarmed black men, setting off massive protests across the country.
Worth emphasized to reporters after the arraignment that Gurley’s death was a terrible and tragic accident.
“When this case was first investigated, it was determined to be an accidental discharge,” he said. “It remains an accidental discharge today. Nothing has changed since that time except the regrettable and all-too-brief presentation by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office. There is nothing reckless or criminally negligent about the way Officer Liang performed his duties that night.”
