Asian Americans across nation call for leniency for convicted former NYPD cop

A LITTLE over a week after a Chinese American former NYPD officer was found guilty of second-degree manslaughter and official misconduct in a November 2014 death of an unarmed black man, Asian Americans across the country rallied to protest his conviction.

Thousands of protesters on Saturday, Feb. 20, demonstrated in more than 30 cities to support Peter Liang. The 28-year-old former officer was convicted of the charges on Feb. 11 for the death of Akai Gurley, 28, who died from a bullet that ricocheted off a wall in the stairwell of a housing project in Brooklyn.

In Los Angeles, a predominantly Chinese American crowd demonstrated in Downtown chanting and carrying signs in Chinese and English that read “Save Peter Liang,” “Accident not crime” and “All lives matter.” In New York, a mostly Asian American crowd of nearly 15,000 rallied in Brooklyn, claiming Liang was prosecuted because he is a minority.

Many Asian Americans believe Liang, who had been with the NYPD for 18 months, was used as a scapegoat due to a lack of indictments of other police officers involved in fatal incidents, such as the 2014 chokehold death of Eric Garner.

“There are two white police officers who didn’t even have a trial, in Ferguson and Staten Island,” said Tim Wu, 24, a Brooklyn protestor and student who came from China six months ago, according to the New York Post. “That makes Chinese people very nervous. It is obvious it was an accident.”

Xiayi Shirley Zhang, a 27-year-old who lives in Downtown Los Angeles, told the Los Angeles Times on Saturday she wondered why the NYPD assigned the rookie officer in a high-crime neighborhood.

During the 2014 incident, Liang was patrolling the Louis Pink Houses in East New York with his partner Shaun Landau. Vertical patrols require that officers first check the roof, where criminal activity often occurs, then descend the stairs floor by floor, according to testimony reported by NBC News. The duo started on the eighth floor.

Liang said he had his Glock 9 mm gun in his left hand and a flashlight in his right on Nov. 20, 2014, adding it is officers’ discretion when to draw their weapon. He said he tried to turn the stairway door knob with his right hand, but it wouldn’t open so he pushed it with his right shoulder.

He said he then heard a “quick sound” to his left, which startled him, and that his gun subsequently went off.

Gurley had entered a stairwell from the seventh floor with his girlfriend Melissa Butler when the bullet fired from Liang’s gun bounced off the wall and hit Gurley, who made it to the fifth floor with Butler where he collapsed and died, according to testimony reported by NBC.

NYPD Police Commissioner William Bratton at the time of the shooting said the fatal shot “appears to be an accidental discharge” of Liang’s gun.

Prosecutors, however, argued that the shooting wasn’t an accident beyond Liang’s control and that he should be held accountable for his actions. They also said neither Liang nor Landau called their supervisors after the shot was fired, despite the fact they both had functioning radios and cellphones, and that Liang’s failure to perform CPR on Gurley demonstrated “callousness.”

Defense attorneys Robert Brown and Rae Koshetz argued during the trial that Liang was in a “state of shock” after his gun accidentally went off, that he did not know his bullet hit anyone and that he attempted to make several radio transmissions about the shooting that were incomplete or did not go through, NBC News reported.

In court, Liang testified that he felt unqualified to perform CPR on Gurley because he was given answers to the exam and never had the opportunity to practice on a mannequin at the Police Academy.

An important factor in the jury’s decision to convict Liang came after each of the jurors was able to pull the trigger on his service weapon. They all reached the consensus that there was no way the gun could have gone off the way Liang testified it did.

“It was very hard to pull the trigger,” juror Carlton Screen, a retired candy-store owner from Flatbush, Brooklyn, told the Post.

“They had another safety that’s on the trigger itself, so you have to pull it hard enough to release that safety in order for it to fire.”

Liang is the first NYPD officer to be convicted in the last decade. In 2005, Bryan Conroy, who is white, killed an African immigrant during a police raid. Conroy was sentenced to probation and 500 hours of community service.

Landau, Liang’s partner, was not criminally charged in the case and received immunity for his testimony. However, both were terminated from the NYPD.

Liang is scheduled to be sentenced on April 14. He faces up to 15 years in prison.

While many Asian Americans are calling for leniency for Liang, others say he and his partner did not execute their responsibilities as NYPD officers that evening, and must be held accountable.

“All the evidence presented before the jury demonstrates that Officer Liang is in fact guilty,” Cathy Dang, executive director of CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities, a group that addresses police hate and violence toward Asian immigrants and one that supported Liang’s indictment, said in a statement. “Now, what we have left is to hold the entire system accountable.”

Asian American writer Jay Caspian Kang expressed a similar viewpoint in an article he wrote for the New York Times Magazine.

“Even if you believe, as I do, that Liang should be in jail, the inevitable follow-up question – why only Liang? – suggests that the unjust protections routinely afforded to white officers should be extended either to everyone or to nobody at all. To ignore this suggestion is intellectually dishonest,” Kang wrote.