For me and every other family member of Akai Gurley, life will never be the same.
Neither condolences, flowers, nor memories can stop the pain. Justice may not stop the pain either, but there must be accountability and justice for taking Akai’s life. Any failure to achieve that would leave an additional wound with unimaginable hurt.
Akai’s mother asked the rhetorical question, “How should I feel after bringing someone into the world to then have them unjustly taken from me?”
I feel the same way, and I have some real questions for NYPD Officer Peter Liang.
AKAI GURLEY’S FRIEND TESTIFIES AT NYPD COP PETER LIANG’S MANSLAUGHTER TRIAL
If Akai Gurley had been your son, father or family member, how would you have felt after his death?
How would you cope with the situation we have before us?
How would you comfort his mother?
How would you comfort his children?
Officer Liang: you knew someone was shot, but didn’t know who it was.
It could have been anyone — any of the hundreds of children or family members who live in Pink Houses.
You may not live in public housing, but many people do. The lives of public housing residents are no less valuable than anyone else’s. Yet, the recklessness in which you acted and carried yourself, as someone who is paid taxpayer dollars to protect and serve New Yorkers, demonstrates an indifference to the lives of public housing tenants. They are people just like you who are trying to live their lives and raise their children with what they have.
LONE BLACK JUROR SERVING ON NYPD OFFICER’S MANSLAUGHTER TRIAL MAY GET EXCUSED
Why did you have your gun out in a place where families live, where children walk up and down the stairs, where they play and travel?
I’ve tried to console myself, but I don’t know how to start. I have to console Akai’s mother, his siblings, and other members of the family — aunt, uncle, cousins. I don’t know where my road forward lies, because I am constantly saddened to realize there is no longer a voice at the other end of the phone. Instead, my family and I now have to take a sorrowful road to a gravesite 850 miles away from where we live.
To know that where there once was a smile, there is now a void because a life has been uprooted in the most terrible manner.
Many other families whose loved ones have been taken by police violence must feel this pain in this same manner. However, the pain is still always personal.
We never asked to be placed in this position, but your actions have forced us to be here and go through this.
Police officers are supposed to keep our communities and families safe, not devastate our families by taking away a son, a father, a partner, nephew and cousin.
Like so many in our communities, I’m tired of the excuses and the lack of accountability.
While the killing of Akai resembles those of so many other black and Latino people in this city and country whose lives are unjustly cut short by police violence, this trial is about accountability for the killing of Akai. Any efforts made to portray it as anything else are an excuse and attempt to distract from the fact that Officer Liang recklessly killed another human being. It was an abuse of power to take a life, which Officer Liang and every police officer is inherently trusted with when provided with a badge and a firearm.
Officer Liang violated that trust.
We all must be responsible for our actions, and the law must hold police officers accountable just like it does civilians.
Officer Liang has to face the fact he left a hole in a family, leaving two little girls without a father to take them to school, to see them graduate and grow up.
It is our justice system that must ensure we hold Officer Liang and all cops accountable when they violate the law they are paid to uphold.
Palmer is the stepfather of Akai Gurley
