Thousands of Chinese Americans marched downtown Saturday to protest the conviction of NY police officer Peter Liang for the 2014 shooting death of an unarmed black man.
Advertisement
They argued that Liang’s February 11 conviction for accidentally killing Akai Gurley, 28, with a stray bullet only occurred because he is a minority, and that it was meant to pacify those who are angry about other shootings of minorities by police in the USA, which has been a hot topic over the past year, the Daily Mail reported. Liang’s supporters said the Chinese-American former police officer wouldn’t have been convicted of second-degree manslaughter and official misconduct if he had been white. Protesters expressed their condolences for Gurley and his family while one protester said that Liang’s case isn’t comparable to the police shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., or the chokehold death of Eric Garner at the hands of a NY police officer.
“I can’t believe the police officers are trying to say that Akai did something to cause this wrongful shooting and his death, when all he did was try to walk down a public staircase”, Ballinger told The News.
Liu continued: “So in an incident where an Asian-American officer shoots his gun, not aiming at anybody, shoots it by accident, we were all shocked last Thursday, when the guilty verdict came out”.
On November 20, 2014, Liang, a 27-year-old “rookie” officer with only a year-and-half on the job, was patrolling on the eighth floor of the Pink Houses with his partner, Shaun Landau, who was also new to the job.
“I think you have to examine Peter Liang’s case in the context of wrong time, wrong place”.
In a show of solidarity, Chinese-American groups in 35 cities across the US protested Liang’s conviction in a synchronized rally Saturday. Zheng said he started to organize the rally after Liang’s sentence. The bullet hit and eventually killed Akai Gurley who was walking down the stairs with his girlfriend at the time.
The protest was planned a week ago by about 12 individuals and organizations including the National Council of Chinese Americans and the Greater Philadelphia United Chinese-American Chamber of Commerce.
But Kimberly Ortiz, 31, of the Bronx, said it’s “unbelievable” that anyone would rally for Liang.
After about 20 minutes of face-to-face protests, the groups separated, with Liang supporters filling much of Cadman Plaza Park and about a dozen people behind a Black Lives Matter banner counter-demonstrating from a traffic island facing the plaza.
In the court hearing, Liang testified that in the pitch-dark stairway, he was startled by a noise.
Advertisement
Sentencing is set for mid-April. Prosecutors said there was no threat and that Liang shouldn’t have drawn his gun or put his finger on the trigger. “Whether you had training or not, it’s a life, a life that you took”, she said.
