I found this sub yesterday and I'm really excited to participate, so let's give this a shot!
In America, we often hear stories about how the police system fails its officers. It fails to train them for stressful situations, it fails to hold them accountable for when they do wrong. It fails to care for their mental health - the number one killer of cops is suicide.
This is the same system that failed Peter Liang. I maintain that Peter Liang is guilty. But it's clear that he was under-trained and unprepared for the job he was given. A rookie cop shouldn't have been in that building, and he shouldn't have had his gun drawn. The NYPD is purposely very vague about when your gun should be holstered. From the recordings and police statements, it's also evident that Peter Liang did NOT receive adequate CPR training - nor was he properly trained in the event of an accidental discharge of a weapon.
In the aftermath of the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, we've seen a profound social push to convict "bad" cops. You can imagine then, the surprise the Asian community felt when a man was finally convicted - and his name was Peter Liang. How convienient it seems, that neither Officer Pantaleo nor Brown received so much as an indictment, but Liang faces up to 15 years for what the NY District Attorney referred to as an accident. The rioters don't see themselves as kindred with white people - they see Peter Liang as a scapegoat for years and years of police brutality that Asians weren't responsible for.
Now, here's where I may lose what little shot I had at a delta. You ask why we didn't stand with Black people during the protests. Firstly, we did. At colleges across the States, Asians came together to support the BLM movement. Secondly, the public school system does a minimal amount to teach people about modern institutionalized racism against Black people.
But minority-on-Asian crime is high, particularly in low-income urban areas like where these protests are occurring. In 2008, the San Francisco PD found that in 85% of strong arm robberies, the victims were Asian and the perpetrators were African American. You may argue that it's white-dominated society that marginalizes minorities and drives them towards crime - and you may be right. But is such a conclusion evident from their point of view?