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History > 2015 > USA > Immigration > Asian-Americans (I)
Asian Community Responds to NYPD Officer's Death
Video The New
York Times 5 January 2015
Since the death of Officer Wenjian Liu,
many in New York's Asian community
have begun to reflect on the impact of the killing.
Produced by: Channon Hodge, Poh Si Teng and Ashley Maas
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http://nyti.ms/1vUjB1a
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In New York
City,
a Toll Is
Newly Felt
as Asians
Rise in the Police Ranks
JAN. 3, 2015
The New York
Times
By DAVID W.
CHEN
Officer Peter
Liang is the rookie who fatally shot an unarmed man, in what police officials
said was an accident, in the stairwell of an East New York, Brooklyn, housing
project.
Lt. Philip Chan is the veteran officer who suffered a broken nose after being
punched during a protest on the Brooklyn Bridge.
And Officer Wenjian Liu was one of the two policemen who were gunned down in
their patrol car in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
Within the last few weeks, Asian-American officers have been in the middle of a
series of wrenching incidents involving the New York Police Department. Their
front-line roles are more than just coincidence: They testify to a
little-noticed but significant surge in their ranks.
Twenty-five years ago, there were just 200 Asian-American officers in New York
City. Now there are more than 2,100 in uniform, or six percent of the total,
police statistics show. The percentage of academy graduates, moreover, has
jumped to 9 percent, from 4 percent, in the last decade.
Many arrived in the United States as children and grew up on the Lower East Side
of Manhattan working alongside their parents in restaurants or garment
factories. And a good number say they chose law enforcement because of the
allure of a steady Civil Service job, a less-heralded career path than the
legal, medical and engineering tracks that many immigrant families — especially
those coming from wealthier and better-educated backgrounds — aspire to.
“Even though the elites get all the attention, this is the group that’s
comparable to most other immigrants and migrants that have entered into the
American workplace,” said John Kuo Wei Tchen, a New York University historian
who is a co-founder of the Museum of Chinese in America. “This is the working
man’s opportunity to move up the ladder.”
Asian-Americans are now assigned to all precincts, not just ethnic enclaves such
as Chinatown; Flushing, Queens; and Sunset Park, Brooklyn. But with critical
mass has come, invariably, more risk.
Officer Liu is believed to be the first Chinese-American to be killed in the
line of duty in the city. Last year, Officer James Li survived after being shot
in the legs on a bus in Brooklyn.
About half of the department’s Asian members are Chinese, reflecting the
composition of the city’s overall Asian population. But even with their growth,
Asians are still underrepresented in the department relative to the 15 percent
of city residents who identify themselves as Asians, census figures show. By
comparison, 10 percent of the Los Angeles Police Department’s officers and 13
percent of that city’s population are Asian.
But barriers abounded a generation ago. The department’s 5-foot-8 height
requirement for men — overturned by litigation in the 1970s — disqualified an
untold number of candidates, especially those who hailed from Hong Kong and
southern China, where the men are typically shorter. And few immigrants had law
enforcement or military roots; if anything, many, accustomed to repressive
governments in China and Taiwan, were suspicious of authority.
One veteran officer in Chinatown, who moved to New York from Guangdong province
when he was 10, said that while his parents were open-minded about his career
choice, many of their friends disapproved. He remembered his parents’ friends
alluding to a common axiom, which roughly translates as “Good sons don’t become
public officials.”
“Few would become cops,” said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity
because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “But now more and more.”
Other skeptics included the New Yorkers the officers were trying to protect.
“Some people refused to be arrested by me, even when I showed them the badge,”
said Thomas N. Ong, who retired in 1999 as a detective and is now a private
investigator. “They’d say things like, ‘You’re a cop? There are Chinese cops? I
didn’t know Chinese were cops.’ ”
The police had all but adopted a laissez-faire attitude toward Asian-dominated
neighborhoods, “thinking that the Asians had their own way of doing things,”
said Peter Kwong, a Hunter College professor who has written several books about
Chinatown.
“There’s a long history of frustration,” he said. “When you complained they
would say we don’t know the community, we don’t know the language. And since
Asians didn’t vote, there was no pressure on the police to be proactive.”
Even today, with the increased Asian presence on the force, language remains a
barrier. Chinese officers, particularly older ones, tend to speak Cantonese or
Mandarin, and not the Fuzhou dialect that has become more prevalent in
working-class areas like Chinatown and Sunset Park. Tensions also persist over
neighborhood issues like enforcement of street-vending rules and police vehicles
taking up precious parking spaces in Chinatown, which abuts Police Headquarters
and court buildings.
But the department has moved to integrate its ranks far more quickly than, say,
the Fire Department, after aggressive recruiting and community-relations
efforts. Protests in Chinatown alleging police brutality in the 1970s, as well
as intensifying gang violence in the 1980s, accelerated that endeavor, Professor
Kwong said.
Another breakthrough came in 1984, when Hugh H. Mo was appointed as deputy
police commissioner of trials, and became the highest-ranking person of Asian
descent in city government. He gladly posed for a recruiting poster.
Years after Mr. Mo, a former prosecutor, left office, he said, “I ran into these
parents who came up to me and said, ‘Mr. Mo, my son is a cop, and they say it’s
because of you.’ ”
The recruitment effort extended beyond the five boroughs. Robert May, a retired
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police officer who is president
emeritus of the New Jersey Asian American Law Enforcement Officers Association,
said that New York police officers would attend his group’s events, and try to
convince members to take the city’s written test. Several did.
Detective Ong was one of about a dozen officers who founded the Asian Jade
Society, a police fraternal group, in 1980. By 1994, when the group held its
annual banquet, there were 300 members. A few years ago, the group exceeded
1,000 dues-paying members.
“We envisioned that it was going to grow, but to grow to 1,000 in my lifetime?”
Detective Ong said.
The story of Officer Ben Hoo Wong, who works out of the 109th Precinct in
Flushing, is typical.
Mr. Wong, 42, emigrated from Taishan in 1991 with his parents and two older
siblings. After working in a garment factory and spending a year at LaGuardia
Community College, he became a Postal Service employee — another popular Civil
Service option — because his parents wanted him to land a “good, stable
government job,” he said. But he also volunteered to be an auxiliary officer,
because “since I was a young child, my parents said I needed to help people.”
After some budget cuts at the post office, Mr. Wong said, he applied to the
Police Department and graduated from the academy in 2010 as the oldest new
officer, at 38, in his class. Since then, he has routinely handled situations
requiring a Chinese-speaking officer. He says he is inspired by how many
Asian-Americans have become department supervisors.
If Mr. Wong embodies the current generation, then Yishan Tu, a 23-year-old
native of Pingtung, in southern Taiwan, may well represent the future.
When Ms. Tu’s family moved to Queens eight years ago, her father, a
schoolteacher, could find work only as an assistant to a real estate agent. But,
she said, the family scraped by thanks to government and community help, and she
attended public schools.
The call to public service may have been stoked by friends, also immigrants, who
joined the military. So with her family’s blessing, she eyed a similar avenue —
the police — because she thought her Mandarin and Taiwanese skills would be in
demand. She passed the written test last year, and is now waiting for her chance
while working as a double-decker-bus tour guide in Manhattan.
“I want to give back,” she said. “I’m going to be one of the good guys.”
Jeffrey E.
Singer contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print
on January 4, 2015,
on page A1 of the
New York edition with the headline:
Toll Newly Felt as Asians Rise in Police
Ranks.
In New York
City, a Toll Is Newly Felt as Asians Rise in the Police Ranks,
NYT,
3.1.2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/nyregion/in-new-york-city-a-toll-is-newly-felt-as-asians-rise-in-the-police-ranks.html
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