N.Y. / Region Crowd Gathers in Brooklyn to Protest a Police Shooting By DAN GLAUN DEC. 27, 2014 About 200 people marched through the East New York section of Brooklyn on Saturday afternoon to protest the death of Akai Gurley, an unarmed black man who was fatally shot last month by a police officer in a public-housing project stairwell. Mr. Gurley’s relatives led the demonstration from the building in the Louis H. Pink Houses where the shooting occurred to a nearby police command post. The protest began shortly after the close of funeral services for Officer Rafael Ramos, who was shot to death in his patrol car along with Officer Wenjian Liu on Dec. 20. By marching, those on hand were defying Mayor Bill de Blasio’s request that protesters suspend their activities in the wake of the police killings. “Every 28 hours a person is killed in the United States by a police officer or authority figure or vigilante, and nothing stops for them,” said Kirbie Joseph, an organizer of the march. “Everything goes business as usual, and so we can’t stop.” Mr. Gurley, 28, was killed on Nov. 20 in a Pink Houses stairwell while walking with his girlfriend. Officer Peter Liang was conducting a so-called vertical patrol in the building at the time and had his gun drawn. The weapon fired, killing Mr. Gurley in what Police Commissioner William J. Bratton has described as “an unfortunate accident.” Demonstrators have not accepted that explanation. Mr. Gurley, whose death is the subject of an inquiry by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, has joined Eric Garner and Michael Brown, both of whom died at the hands of police officers this year, as a symbolic figure among those calling for an end to what they consider a pattern of police violence against unarmed black people. The protesters in Brooklyn repeated several of the chants heard at demonstrations in New York and elsewhere in recent weeks — including “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” and “I can’t breathe!” — and intoned Mr. Gurley’s name from the steps of the building where he was killed. A version of this article appears in print on December 28, 2014, on page A28 of the New York edition with the headline: Crowd Gathers in Brooklyn To Protest a Police Shooting . Order Reprints| Todays Paper|Subscribe
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 04:09:05 +0000
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