The justice system has always failed Asian-Americans.
We remember all too well the brutal 1982 slaying of Vincent Chin — a 27-year-old Chinese-American man killed near Detroit by two thugs who believed he was Japanese and thus responsible for Motown’s downturn. His killers got off virtually scot-free.
Army Pvt. Danny Chen, who grew up in Manhattan’s Chinatown, was systematically beaten and harassed, driving him to suicide. His tormentors were barely given slaps on the wrist.
And now, the community has been victimized again — this time by Brooklyn DA Ken Thompson and his office’s unjust prosecution of NYPD Officer Peter Liang.
Make no mistake about it: New York’s Asian-American community couldn’t be more united and outraged by this miscarriage of justice.
By any reasonable reading of the law — and common sense — Liang’s conviction for second-degree manslaughter was wrong and should be struck down. It was a tragic accident, for which this punishment doesn’t fit the crime — which really wasn’t a crime at all, only a horrible mishap.
Liang and a fellow rookie were in a dark staircase at the Pink Houses in East New York when his gun went off, killing innocent victim Akai Gurley.
Liang never had the intent to kill. He never even saw Gurley.
Yet somehow, Thompson and jurors failed to grasp this most basic, undisputed fact.
New York’s Asian-American community can’t help comparing Gurley’s tragic, accidental killing to the homicide that took the life of Eric Garner on Staten Island. Garner died from a chokehold by NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo — in broad daylight as Garner screamed, “I can’t breathe!”
Garner’s slaying stands in stark contrast to Gurley’s death from an unintended gunshot in the dark that ricocheted off a wall.
Yet Garner’s killer, Pantaleo, is walking free while Liang, who never aimed his gun at anyone, is due to be sentenced for up to 15 years behind bars next month.
How can this be? Why is Liang, this rookie Asian-American cop, possibly going to prison for a tragic accident while others are never even charged?
Because it was an easy political choice.
Thompson used Liang to satisfy a segment of his constituency with long-standing grievances about police mistreatment — as if scapegoating Liang somehow erases all sins ever committed by the NYPD.
The prosecution was also a political winner for Thompson because it didn’t seem to faze the powerful Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, which didn’t put up much of a fight as Liang was railroaded.
So DA Thompson achieved all his political goals — with the only costs being Liang’s freedom and furthering the not-so-thinly-veiled message to New York’s Asian-American community that its grievances don’t matter.
Whether the name is Chin, Chen or Liang, Asian-Americans have long been told that their pain and humiliation don’t register. And now that’s been affirmed in a Brooklyn courtroom.
Shirley Ng is a freelance writer and Manhattan Chinatown native.