Peter Liang and Asian America

In December of last year, NYPD Officer Peter Liang fatally shot unarmed Akai Gurley in a dark stairwell. Recently, he was indicted by a grand jury and found guilty of second-degree manslaughter. In fact, this is one of the rare cases in which an NYPD officer is actually convicted. It’s not really that simple.

 

On one side of Asian America, Chinese Americans rallied across the nation (including Oregon) by the thousands to protest the conviction, claiming that Peter Liang is a person of color and as a result is being “used as a scapegoat”. On the other side, many Asian American advocacy groups felt the conviction (second-degree manslaughter) was fair and additionally, that these protests pit minority groups against each other in an era of #BlackLivesMatter.

For more on the case, I spoke with Joseph Santos-Lyons, Executive Director of the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO). This interview was featured on the February 26th, 2016 episode of XRAY in the Morning and again on Jenn Chavez’s public affairs show, The Five Quadrants of Portland. Check out the podcast!

Air date: 2/26/2016