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NYPD Investigating Police Academy CPR Class Taken By Officer Who Fatally Shot Akai Gurley
By
Emma Whitford
Published Feb 23, 2016
Modified Feb 24, 2016
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By
Emma Whitford
Published Feb 23, 2016
Modified Feb 24, 2016
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NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton told reporters on Tuesday that his department is currently investigating the Police Academy CPR class taken by Peter Liang—the former NYPD officer convicted this month of manslaughter and official misconduct in the shooting death of Brooklyn man Akai Gurley.
Liang shot Gurley while performing a vertical patrol of the Pink Houses in East New York in November of 2014. Bratton immediately declared the shooting an accident, and called Gurley, who was unarmed, a "total innocent."
When Liang took to the witness stand in Brooklyn Supreme Court earlier this month, he testified that his CPR training had been minimal.
"Did you learn CPR at the police academy?" Liang's attorney, Rae Koshetz, asked her client on the stand. Liang replied that he "sort of" had, adding that his class had been fed the answers by the police academy instructor. He also testified that he had never been trained for CPR with a dummy.
"Under no circumstances will we tolerate any instructor in the New York City Police Department short-circuiting the process for this instruction," Bratton said on Tuesday, adding that "literally within a half hour of that testimony being made, Internal Affairs initiated [an] investigation."
Bratton described the CPR investigation as "very extensive" on Tuesday, and said that all of the officers who took the class are being interviewed "very intimately" about the statements made in court. He added that results of the investigation would be made public.
According to court testimony, Liang didn't know that he had shot Gurley until he and his partner, Officer Shaun Landau, came across Gurley's girlfriend Melissa Butler administering CPR on a lower stairwell landing. The officers allegedly spent several minutes arguing over whether to alert superiors that Liang had fired his weapon. Meanwhile, Butler called 911. In court, Butler testified that "the Asian officer was doing nothing the whole time."
Liang also testified in court that he "never really touched" his firearm training manual, and that he primarily learned about firearm safety from Powerpoint presentations. However, Bratton did not allude to any investigation into firearm safety training on Tuesday.
The NYPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether the CPR investigation will extend beyond Liang's CPR class, and if the NYPD has plans to investigate firearm training as well.
Reporting by Miranda Katz.
Tagged
Akai Gurley
Bill Bratton
cpr
internal investigation
nypd
Peter Liang
Emma Whitford
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