Indictment Of Chinese American Cop Sparks Outcry, Divides Communities

The recent indictment of a Chinese American officer from Bensonhurst in the death of Akai Gurley weighed on the minds of many during this year’s Lunar New Year celebrations.

While the charges brought against Officer Peter Liang hit particularly hard for Bensonhurst’s Chinese American community, which had just mourned the death of Detective Wenjian Liu, opinions are pretty divided. Today’s New York Times reports on the debate going on within the city’s Chinese American communities:

Some have hesitated, reluctant to find politics or racial discrimination in the indictment of Officer Liang. Others have hailed the charges against him as a means of improving relations between the police and all minorities. But for some, the indictment is nothing less than the scapegoating of a young officer whose parents may have to live without their only son — and a call to arms for a minority group that has never been as politically active as blacks or Hispanics.

“We don’t want to be pushed around anymore, or picked on anymore,” Mr. Gim said. “We’re going to fight back.”

Meanwhile, a White House petition to support Officer Liang has been circulating on Facebook and the Chinese social media app WeChat, garnering over 117,000 signatures nationwide. In addition, Free Officer Liang pages have popped up on Facebook.

The petition demands that Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson withdraw the indictment against Officer Liang and accuses prosecutors of scapegoating the rookie cop for political gain.

Officer Liang was indicted on February 11 on manslaughter charges, after he fired his weapon into a dark stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project and his ricocheting bullet killed Gurley, an unarmed father-of-two. Commissioner Bill Bratton, police unions, and the mayor have called the shooting an accident, while Gurley’s family have demanded a homicide indictment.

Prosecutors’ success at indicting Officer Liang – who did not intend to kill Gurley – stands in sharp contrast to cases against the officers connected to the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, who were allowed to walk free despite witnesses and video evidence, sparking angry protests in Ferguson and New York.

The Times also published a powerful piece focusing on the Pink Houses in East New York, where Gurley was shot and where many resident are still shaken by the incident. There too, residents were divided and expressed frustration about out the arbitrariness of the legal justice system.

It did not go unnoticed that while Officer Liang is an officer of color, the uncharged officers involved in the deaths of Brown and Garner are white:

For Gregory Rosario, 24, the confusion about what exactly had happened in the stairwell made it all the more ironic that Officer Liang, a Chinese-American, was the only officer who would face charges.

“You think if the officer’s not a minority, he would get indicted?” said Mr. Rosario, who grew up in the Pink Houses. “If he was Caucasian, he wouldn’t be indicted. In Eric Garner, they had everything on the table and they didn’t do anything. Here there’s no video, no proof, but they indicted him.”