NO ASIAN COALITION, PART 1
On 20 November 2014, a New York police officer, Peter Liang, joined by his partner, Shaun Landau, entered the Louis H. Pink Houses for a routine patrol of the Brooklyn public housing complex. During the vertical patrol of the building, Liang drew his weapon as he opened the door to the stairwell. According to Liang’s defense, a loud noise startled him, which caused him to accidentally pull the trigger. The bullet ricocheted against the wall and fatally struck Akai Gurley, who had entered the stairwell with his friend, Melissa Butler, a floor below. As Gurley bled on the floor, Liang, and his partner, both recent police academy graduates, debated who would call in the incident to authorities and failed to administer CPR to the wounded victim. Both officers said in court that they were not properly trained to administer CPR and claimed that the NYPD had helped them cheat during the certification test; Liang’s defense team also claimed he was too emotionally distraught to perform CPR. In February 2015, a grand jury indicted Peter Liang in the November shooting.
Akai Gurley’s death came at a time when many white officers went uncharged in the deaths of unarmed African-American individuals, most notably the Eric Garner and Michael Brown cases. The New York Daily News reported that, in the previous 15 years, of the 179 NYPD officer-involved deaths, three officers had been indicted. Liang supporters pointed to racial and ethnic bias to explain the differences between Liang’s charges compared to the non-convictions or light sentences of white officers in similar cases. His supporters blamed the shooting on the difficult patrol conditions of the public housing unit, noting its dark lighting and poor maintenance as crucial factors that resulted in the accidental shooting. For Liang supporters, the indictment made Liang a scapegoat for the numerous non-convictions of white officers.
On 8 March 2015, a month after the indictment, around 2,000 protesters rallied at New York City Hall in support of Liang. The protesters, like most of the demonstration organizers, were mainly older Chinese-American immigrants who came to the United States in the past 20 years. Demonstrators came in buses from states along the East Coast, including Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, and marched from City Hall to Chatham Square in Chinatown after a press conference. Since many of the participants spoke Chinese as their first language, a significant proportion of the signs and banners at the rally were translated into both Chinese and English. Protesters waved American flags and held signs that expressed support for the NYPD and Officer Liang.
Five days after the rally on 13 March 2015, Assemblyman William Colton spoke to a small crowd at the United Chinese Association senior center and expressed his support for Liang. Colton blamed the shooting on the conditions of housing units and said, “A gun accidentally being discharged by an officer who has drawn the gun because he felt he was threatened… he was walking in a dark hallway, with a gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other. I don’t see a criminal act, but I do see the possibility of a criminal act in having stairways being unlit for weeks and months.” New York State Assemblyman Peter J. Abbate Jr., whose district consisted of a considerable number of Chinese-American constituents, echoed a similar message that focused on the hazardous conditions of the Louis Pink Houses.
After a year-long investigation, the jury reached a verdict on 11 February 2016. The court found Peter Liang guilty of official misconduct, second-degree manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, second-degree assault, and reckless endangerment. Liang was the first NYPD officer to be convicted in a line-of-duty shooting in more than a decade and faced up to 15 years in prison.
In response to the verdict, Liang’s attorney, Robert Brown, called on Liang’s supporters to sign and send letters to Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun, who presided over the case. The letters asked the judge to repeal Liang’s conviction based on the prosecutor’s inadequate evidence supporting the charge. In addition to these letters, his supporters also started numerous other petitions that asked for a fair review of Liang’s case. The Lin Sing Association started a petition that received 1,000 signatures, while other activists founded two We the People petitions (which elicited an official response from the White House after surpassing 100,000 signatures). One of these petitions reached 120,000 signatures and specifically called on Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth P. Thompson to withdraw the indictment against Liang. Continue—
