Although Asian Americans are divided on the indictment of NYPD police officer Peter Liang, majority support effort to help the embattled rookie cop be freed from criminal liability for the death of Akai Gurley.
One effort to help the 27-year-old who was dismissed from the police force is an online petition addressed to the White House to withdraw Liang’s indictment. The petition has more than 120,000 signatures, but Yahoo pointed out that the decision is outside President Barack Obama’s powers.
Amid protests over the indictment, which many Asian Americans see as racist because white officer who shot to death unarmed black men are not charged, while Liang was indicted, the Brooklyn DA stood by its second-degree manslaughter charge. In an email statement in Friday to NBC News, Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson said, “While we know that Peter Liang did not intend to kill Akai Gurley, he was convicted because his reckless actions cost an innocent man his life.”
Thompson insisted the case is about the incident in Brooklyn and not in Ferguson or Staten Island in reference to other black men deaths involving white officers. He stressed that Liang was convicted based on unique and tragic facts.
City Comptroller John Liu, who addressed the estimated 10,000 protesters who gathered on Saturday in a Brooklyn plaza, said he was not surprised by the Brooklyn court’s action. What happened to the young officer, he said, is an example of the popular phrase “Chinaman’s chance” which means “if you are a Chinese in America, there’s no hope for you.”
The New York Post describes the verdict on Liang as a failure of the justice system for Asian-Americans. The ethnic community in New York is angry and outraged, but united, by the miscarriage of justice. Carrying a Chinese surname such as Chen, Chin or Liang means that the pain and humiliation of people with such names “don’t register” which the Brooklyn court just affirmed.