http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/nyregion/brooklyn-officer-charged-in-fatal-off-duty-shooting-pleads-not-guilty.html 2016-09-27 21:05:56 Brooklyn Officer Charged in Fatal Off-Duty Shooting Pleads Not Guilty The officer, Wayne Isaacs, shot Delrawn Small in a traffic dispute in the Cypress Hills neighborhood on July 4, according to initial police accounts. === A New York City police The officer, Wayne Isaacs, arrived at the courthouse just after 10 a.m., flanked by law enforcement officers. The family of Delrawn Small, the man killed in the July 4 confrontation, filled two rows behind prosecutors. The judge, Alexander B. Jeong, granted prosecutors’ request that bail be set at $500,000 for Officer Isaacs, who is also charged with manslaughter. In the request, Joshua Gradinger, an assistant district attorney, said the shooting was “a brutal, deliberate action wherein this defendant fired not one, not two, but three shots” at Mr. Small, who was unarmed, “with absolutely no legal justification.” Officer Isaacs, who was assigned to the 79th Precinct in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, was driving home early on July 4 after finishing a 4 p.m.-to-midnight shift when he got into a traffic dispute with Mr. Small in the Cypress Hills neighborhood, according to initial police accounts. Surveillance video showed Mr. Small approaching the officer’s vehicle at a stoplight on Atlantic Avenue; within seconds he stumbles and falls to the ground. Justice Jeong ordered Officer Isaacs, 37, to surrender his United States and Guyanese passports and any firearms he possessed besides his service weapon, which he had already surrendered along with the personal firearm used in the shooting. The officer’s lawyer, Stephen C. Worth, called the prosecutors’ bail request “outrageous” and said there was no reason to believe that his client, who lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children, would try to flee. He compared the case to that of Officer Peter Liang, who was allowed to remain free after he was indicted in 2014 for manslaughter in the killing of an unarmed man, Akai Gurley, in the stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project. Video of the scene, Mr. Worth said, clearly showed that Officer Isaacs had done nothing to provoke Mr. Small, who he said “wasn’t coming over to give him best wishes and salutations.” He pointed out that his client had remained at the scene after the shooting, called for emergency assistance and immediately reported that he had been assaulted. “To suggest that somehow this was some kind of wanton killing in light of that video is ludicrous,” Mr. Worth said. But Justice Jeong said the comparison to Officer Liang’s case was irrelevant because Mr. Liang had shot Mr. Gurley by accident. Mr. Isaacs, who has been suspended, was charged with intentionally shooting Mr. Small. As Mr. Worth pleaded with the judge, a court officer placed Mr. Isaacs in handcuffs. Mr. Small’s wife shrieked; relatives behind her sobbed. Outside the courtroom after the arraignment, Mr. Worth said the case turned on the question of the point at which Mr. Isaacs had a right to defend himself. He said he expected his client would be acquitted. State Assemblyman Charles Barron, a Brooklyn Democrat who attended the arraignment, disagreed. He said Officer Isaacs deserved to be thrown “under the jail.”