Approximately 5,000 people staged a demonstration in San Francisco Saturday to protest against the conviction of a New York policeman of Chinese descent for accidental shooting to death of a 28-year-old black man more than one year ago.
In the city where the percentage of ethnic Chinese is one of the highest among major U.S. cities, thousands of demonstrators gathered initially at Justin Herman Plaza across the historic Ferry Building.
While organizers expected some 2,000 people to show up, the crowd on Saturday morning was estimated by police officers on the scene to have reached about 5,000, nearly half of them mobilized by a number of community groups at Chinatown.
The rest of demonstrators came from across the San Francisco Bay Area.
A volunteer, identified herself as Kathy, from South Bay, said she felt sorry for NYPD (New York Police Department) officer Peter Liang and for Mr. Akai Gurley, the victim of Liang's accidental shooting, and she was there for the Chinese-American community, as it mobilized for a cause, calling for fair treatment for all.
On Nov. 20, 2014, Liang, a 27-year-old with only a year and a half on the job, was patrolling with his partner in Brooklyn's East New York housing project when he was startled by a noise.
In a stairway that prosecutors described as "pitch-dark," Liang drew his gun and fired. The bullet ricocheted off a wall and hit Gurley on a lower level.
Liang was found guilty of the killing of Gurley and was convicted of second-degree manslaughter by a jury on Feb. 11.
The conviction has sparked an uproar within the Chinese-American community in major U.S. cities with substantial Chinese-American population.
After a series of speeches by community leaders, a representative of Ro Khanna, who had announced his bid to run for a seat at the U.S. Congress in this election year, said on behalf of the Indian-American candidate that the ethnic India community in the Bay Area was on board to work for justice for all.
The crowd then paraded nearly 5 km along Market Street, a downtown commercial thoroughfare, to the U.N. Plaza.
With the historic City Hall in the backdrop, the demonstrators gathered again, chanting and delivering speeches.
Sean Yao, of United for Better Community (UBC), a Bay Area community outreach group, reminded the crowd that it is time for everybody to involve in America's political process, especially in the election year. "If you want change," Yao said, "you need to vote."
The city on the U.S. west coast has seen tensions between its African American community and the police force since Dec. 2, 2015, when Mario Woods, a 26-year-old male, was confronted by officers after slashing a stranger. He reportedly refused to drop the knife, and was then shot by as many as 15 rounds fired by five officers.
Protestors against Liang's conviction believed this was the latest case of making the ethnic minority American a scapegoat to pay for the police brutality that has troubled the American society for a long time.
Credit: China Daily/Xinhua
