The protest in Mott Haven was part of a widespread response to police violence prompted  by the death of George Floyd. An 11 p.m. curfew was declared on June 1 and became an 8 p.m.  curfew on June 2 . During the June 4 protest, as the new curfew approached, police blocked off the protesters’ route. This tactic, referred to as kettling, caused the group to redirect their path, leading them right into a police trap, effectively preventing them from exiting the area before curfew.  

“We became trapped,” protester Andom Ghebreghiorgis said. “A deliberate action was planned by the police to stop us prior to the curfew. There was a lot of uncertainty, folks weren’t sure what was going to happen. We thought if we were just talking to the cops, they would let us go.”

HRW reviewed 155 videos and interviewed 81 participants from the Mott Haven protest and  found evidence of at least 61 injuries caused by police.

“Based on this research we were able to document the extent to which the assault in Mott Haven was intentional and in clear violation of international human rights law,” Ida Sawyer, Crisis and Conflict Director at HRW, said. “In all of our research we found no evidence of threats or acts of violence by the protest organizers or protesters. To the contrary, the protest was peaceful until the police responded with violence.” 

 This particular police crackdown has become known as one of the most aggressive examples of their interference in Black Lives Matter marches in New York City. Protesters who experienced the incident, paint a harrowing picture of the violence. 

“We felt like we were being trampled,” Ghebreghiorgis said. “I heard refrains that I had only seen on TV from previous police murders, ‘I can’t breathe, you’re going to kill us’.” 

The police arrested at least 263 people. The arrests included 16 Legal Observers from the National Lawyers Guild and medics. Legal observers and medics were formally exempt from the curfew and the NYPD’s arrest of these groups was a direct violation of the NYPD Patrol Guide. The police have not said whether they are investigating these violations. Chief of Department Terrance Monahan did not respond to a request for comment. 

“The internal mechanisms to hold police accountable are completely obstructed from public view,” Julie Ciccolini, a researcher at HRW, said. “The system has been designed to prevent any real scrutiny. It’s the police policing themselves.”

Most protesters were charged with unlawful assembly, a Class B misdemeanor. As of January 2020, police officers  in the state of New York are not allowed to make arrests for misdemeanors. Instead, officers are supposed to issue a court appearance ticket unless the offender meets a narrow list of criminal exclusions, such as having outstanding warrants. In spite of this law, protesters were detained for hours without cause. 

“We were in our cuffs and it was an extremely hot day, [so we all had] our masks [around] our necks,” Ghebreghiorgis said. “We were in close proximity in this police van with no protection from the coronavirus. We ended up waiting in the [van] for a couple hours. It was clear that they had no plan to process all of us.”

 The Bronx District Attorney has dismissed the unlawful assembly charges from the protest, but some protesters still face charges and will appear in court on October 2. Over 100 lawsuits have been filed against the NYPD for their handling of this incident.  The costs of the arrests continue to mount. 

 “Initially there is the cost to deploy two helicopters and scores police officers and supervisors that day, including significant overtime cost,” Sawyer said. “The department spent $9 million more on overtime than they spend on an average day. The largest cost will likely come from the resulting misconduct complaints, investigation, and lawsuits. We estimate that this operation will cost New York City tax payers at least several million dollars.”

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“Defunding the police is kind of one of those generic terms that means different things for different people,” said Dennis Kenney a criminal justice professor at John Jay College and a former Florida police officer. “Shutting down the NYPD would be a bit of a disaster. They’re talking about somebody else taking over the responsibilities that the police handle.” 

Advocates and protesters contend that allocating funds to social services could improve mental health, addiction and homelessness in different communities, and that it is a better use of taxpayer money. 

Good morning, it’s a beautiful day to defund the police pic.twitter.com/Fxyw3qcmlA

— Allyson BLM 🔜 ?? some festival eventually (@Allys0nwondrlnd) July 7, 2020

The city cuts will reduce municipal services, hirings and in response to the recent protests, take around $1 billion from the Police Department. But protesters argue Mayor Bill de Blasio is not really shifting money away from the police department  amd into programs that will benefit minority communities.

For example, $400 million of the $1 billion cut will be achieved by moving school safety officers under the Department of Education. However, The New York Times reported that the Education Department already sends $300 million a year to police to fund school safety programs, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office. This means that the DOE  will now operate a program it had already been underwriting. Critics say all De Blasio is doing is moving money around and now really cutting the police budget.

Some protesters are also pushing for community policing. But Kenney warns cutting down community police interactions and replacing them with neighborhood vigilantes is risky. 

 “If you shut down police departments, you would then have little islands where you got very different kinds of policing,” Kenney said. “For example, in the Bronx, citizen groups would do something and then in Soho other citizen groups would do different things. So you end up with this hodge podge of extreme tribalism where the rules are different when you cross the street.” 

Barry Latzer, a professor of criminal justice at John Jay College, and former assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, also believes communities policing themselves could be dangerous. 

“The risk of using citizens is that you have non-professionals doing what professionals do,” he said. “There are violent, armed people on the streets and I don’t think we want unprofessional citizens to interact with them. If they do, I think we would have more incidents of shooting and use of force.”

Another challenge with implementing changes to policing is the hyper-localized nature of police departments across the U.S.

“The challenge with saying, ‘We’ll just put programs in place and reform American policing’ is that reforming 18,000 agencies is a tough task. Reforming one agency is already a tough task,” said Eric Piza, an associate professor at John Jay College, and former GIS specialist of the New Jersey Police Department. 

Piza agreed that defunding the police is feasible as long as it is done strategically and gradually. For instance, programs and organizations that will take on mental health or drug overdose calls would have to be prepared to respond to calls on a 24/7 basis as police departments currently do. 

“If we’re going to take mental health funding away from the police, but not give that money to another agency to make up for the loss of policing that problem, then that’s a problem that probably won’t get any better,” he said. 

Kenney doesn’t think defunding the police is not a viable answer, even if each department is hyper-localized. He believes the services police provide now would have to be provided in through citizen community groups and organizations. Reforms would need to happen on a “neighborhood by neighborhood basis.” Knowing why policing is not effective in certain communities will be key.

“We know collaboration between them (the police) and the community members is the key, “ he said.  “There are 18,000 police departments and 18,000 versions are gonna have to happen.”

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The meeting was held virtually in an online video conference. Thirty-two city officials favored the package and 17 disapproved.  But the package falls short a few billion from the anticipated $95.3 billion before COVID-19.

“With all these challenges we still found a way to get to a budget that again focuses on your health, your safety, putting food on your table, making sure you have a roof over your head,” de Blasio said. 

The budget was announced as demonstrators camped in City Hall Park for the past week. They demanded the defunding of police after weeks of protests over the death of George Floyds and others killed in the hands of law enforcement. And demonstrators were not happy with the approved package.

.@NYCMayor + @CoreyinNYC‘s budget proposal is a loss and LIE to the people of NYC.

These proposed “cuts” to NYPD’s budget are an illusion. @NYCCouncil, your sham is NOT good enough. We are watching. #DefundTheNYPD

— Maya (@politicalmaya) June 30, 2020

According to De Blasio, the budget focused on values and placed $37.5 million in the expansion of healthcare, $113 million in Covid-19 clinics and $450 million towards feeding New Yorkers. 

“It’s also about change,it’s also about progress. It is about ensuring  that we act in the spirit of social justice. I hear the voices all over the city calling for justice,” de Blasio said.

The police cut included canceling July’s officer recruitment of 1163 officers, $296 million dollar overtime reductions and a reduction in contracts and non-personnel expenses. Crossing guards and homeless outreach will no longer be part of NYPD responsibilities. The next recruitment of officers is scheduled for October.

“We have to keep the city safe, we have to protect the levels of patrol strength throughout our communities and we have to make sure that we are really doing something to refocus resources on young people and communities hardest hit,” de Blasio said.

Approximately $430 million in cuts to policing was set to be moved towards summer youth programing, education and family and social services. $537 million from the NYPD Capital program will be shifted to NYCHA broadband expansion and youth recreation centers. 

“This is real distribution, this is taking resources and putting them where they’re needed most with particular focus on young people,” de Blasio said.

New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson was one of the votes in favor of the package. 

The Mayor and I started this process FAR apart on shrinking the NYPD’s budget and footprint and bringing transformational change to the department.

The Council fought hard to get where we are, but I know this is just a starting point, not an ending point. We need to go farther. https://t.co/aW8TmiBe42

— NYC Council Speaker Corey Johnson (@NYCSpeakerCoJo) July 1, 2020

But some  New Yorkers were disappointed by his vote and the decisions made. 

Corey the people of your city asked, called, occupied, & pleaded with you to firmly cut $1 billion from the NYPD budget. You simply did not. You cowered. This was a budget meeting. We asked you to cut NYPD’s budget. We did not ask for “transformational change”. You failed us. https://t.co/rOyRWslxtD

— MJ (@themaicy) July 1, 2020

The speaker just lost my vote. This is not a real measure to defund the NYPD. No headcount reduction, bullshit promises on overtime, and a funding transfer. Did you even try? https://t.co/GRHF8fRYZD

— Eric Buth (@ericbuth) July 1, 2020

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But, for a brief moment yesterday, police and protestors came together in solidarity, a police captain kneeling with demonstrators in remembrance of George Floyd, asking for no further violence or destruction of businesses in return. The protestors agreed in what seemed like a victory in the struggle for peace in the city, but it was short-lived.

As day turned to night, peaceful protests turned to looting, a common theme, starting with the Yankee store on 5th Avenue. It was not long after that chants for justice turned to direct taunts toward officers on the scene. Then, police acting as escorts for the march began to indiscriminately pursue demonstrators, sending the night into a chaotic tailspin.

People watched from their buildings as small fires, smoke and broken glass turned midtown Mahanttan near 57th and 7th into a warzone. As the newly imposed citywide curfew at 11 pm crept up, there were no signs of slowing or stopping by looters and protestors, which only emphasized the NYPD’s loss of control in the city.

A protestor stands in the middle of 5th Avenue, June 2, 2020. Photo by Thomas Hengge

A masked protestor at the New York Public Library, June 2, 2020. Thomas Hengge

A man looks on as protestors make their way past Grand Central Station, June 2, 2020. Photo Thomas Hengge

Protestors march passed Radio City Music Hall, June 2, 2020. Photo by Thomas Hengge

NYPD officers ready to disperse a crowd, June 2, 2020. Photo Thomas Hengge

A protestor clashes with NYPD, June 2, 2020. Photo Thomas Hengge

A police officer hugs a protestor near 57th and 7th, June 2, 2020. Photo by Thomas Hengge

A protestor confronts an NYPD officer, June 2, 2020. Photo by Thomas Hengge

A person shatters the window at Bluemercury, June 2, 2020. Photo by Thomas Hengge

FDNY put out a fire near 57th street and 7th ave, June 2, 2020. Photo by Thomas Hengge

People breaking into the Yankee store, June 2, 2020. Photo by Thomas Hengge

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Crown Heights Protests Police Killing of Saheed Vassell from Pavement Pieces on Vimeo.

Hundreds of protesters gathered on the corner of Utica and Montgomery in Brooklyn to protest the police killing of Saheed Vassell, an unarmed black man who was reportedly diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

“When I was walking through [the scene] yesterday, first thing I thought was like, ‘Lord, don’t let it be my son,” said Janie Watson, an African-American resident of Crown Heights, whose sons are 27 and 16. “Because I know my son walks this side to go to practice, so I was very happy when I go home and I found my son. But God, what happened to the parent whose son didn’t come home.”

On April 4 Vassell was shot and and killed by NYPD after they received three different 911 calls about a man with “a silver firearm” who was “pointing it at people on the street,” according to police reports. Later, police found that the 34-year-old was only holding a silver metal pipe.

“There’s a guy walking around the street,” one of the callers said, according to some of the transcripts of the 911 calls police released early Thursday. “He looks like he’s crazy but he’s pointing something at people that looks like a gun and he’s like popping it as if like if he’s pulling the trigger.”

From early yesterday morning til well past sundown, family, friends and community members collected where the shooting occurred to demonstrate. Unrest began in the wake of the second police-related killing of an unarmed black man in the U.S. in the past month. The first, on March 18, when Sacramento Police fatally shot 22-year-old Stephon Clark eight times in his grandmother’s backyard.

Vassell, a native of the Brooklyn community after emigrating from Jamaica at the age of six, was a familiar face to all in the neighborhood — so much so that residents who knew him, told local news outlets that they knew not to call the police when he was disoriented.

“This makes no sense. This seems…this is really like murder,” said Kobe, a friend of Vassell’s, who asked to only be identified by his first name. “And it could happen to any of us out here over really nothing because you got some cop who’s not from around here that’s trigger happy, feeling to shoot somebody.”

Before 5 p.m. on April 4, five NYPD officers arrived on the scene, to find a disoriented Vassell, which is when they began shooting after finding him in a “two-handed shooting stance.” They went on to shoot him a total of 10 times before rendering medical aid to him. Vessell was then transferred to Kings County Hospital, where he later died. He was known by family and the community to be diagnosed with mental illness, but not harmful.

Eric Vassell, the victim’s father, told The New York Times that his son had been hospitalized multiple times in recent years and told the New York Daily News that he refused to take medication for his condition.

NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan told reporters on Wednesday night that three of the officers on the scene were not in uniform and that none of them were wearing body cameras.

Yesterday morning, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that the incident was “a tragedy by any measure” and shortly after, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced that he will be opening an investigation into the incident.

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As pedestrians and cyclists traverse the roughly one-mile long pathway of the George Washington Bridge, they look over the breathtaking view of high-rise buildings on either side and the Hudson River down below. But at various points along the guardrail, blue signs with bold white lettering for suicide hotlines draw attention to a disturbing part of the bridge’s recent history: the roughly 100 people who have jumped to their deaths during the past seven years.

Suicides have been a fixture at the George Washington Bridge since the high-profile death of Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi in 2010. After 2011, when three people died, the loss of life along the pathway spiked dramatically.

Last year, 12 people jumped to their deaths from the bridge, along with 70 people who were stopped in the middle of an attempted jump. There were 18 people who died at the bridge each year in 2014 and 2015.

The bridge, which connects Washington Heights, Manhattan on one side and Fort Lee, New Jersey on the other, sees a suicide attempt on average every three to four days. The bridge is operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

For years, researchers have argued in favor of installing barriers or other obstructions at high-profile sites. After almost a decade of consideration, construction began this month on a suicide prevention net at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, which has had more than 1,500 deaths since it was built around 80 years ago.

Since many suicides are the result of a temporary period of disordered thinking, restricting access to a means of suicide often results in less loss of life, said suicide prevention expert Lisa Firestone.

“It’s a universal population-based public health approach,” Firestone said. “For instance, when they want to reduce violence one of the things they do is in areas where there’s a lot of violence, they put in speed bumps so people can’t get away quickly. Now, it doesn’t reduce people’s violence potential at all but it does stop the problem.”

Bridge barriers serve a similar function for reducing suicide, Firestone said.

“They don’t make people less suicidal but they do make it so that, in that impulsive moment when someone is thinking of taking their life, it’s not easily accessible,” she said.

Peer-reviewed studies appear to support the efficacy of bridge barriers. According to a 2007 study in The British Journal of Psychology, the installation of barriers at the Clifton suspension bridge did not result in additional suicides at other nearby bridges.

Most suicidal states are temporary and treatable and around 90 percent of people who attempt suicide will go on without any further attempts, Firestone said. Decreasing access to firearms and setting daily purchase limits on the amounts of certain over-the-counter drugs has also been linked to a decrease in suicides.

While Port Authority officials have taken some measures that suicide researchers have urged – like posting signs urging suicidal people to call a crisis hotline and placing phones along the pathway – Firestone insists those actions aren’t enough.

The George Washington Bridge, which connects Washington Heights, Manhattan with Fort Lee, New Jersey has been the site of scores of suicides in recent years. Photo by Razi Syed.

Over the past five months, two claims have been filed against the Port Authority which decry the lack of barriers at the George Washington Bridge.

One claim was filed on Dec. 16 by the Vera Lomtevas, whose 17-year-old son, Daniel, jumped off the George Washington early morning on Oct. 5, 2016.

According to court records, Lomtevas slipped out of his Dyker Heights home around 4 a.m. Minutes later, he hailed an Uber to take him 2111 86th St., Brooklyn and boarded the D train towards Manhattan.

At 7:16 a.m., according to photo metadata, Lomtevas took a picture looking over the Hudson around the start of the southern bridge pathway. By 7:38 a.m. his unconscious body was brought to New York-Presbyterian hospital. He was pronounced dead 57 minutes after his arrival at the hospital.

According to Peter Lomtevas, he was told a Port Authority officer had grabbed a hold of Lomtevas as he attempted to jump and that Lomtevas wriggled himself free and went over the railing. He claims the Port Authority hasn’t made the officer available to speak with him in the six months since his son’s death.

Port Authority spokesman Scott Ladd declined to comment, citing pending litigation.

In her complaint, Vera Lomtevas said that the New York Police Department had been called to the family home and arrived around 6 a.m., more than an hour before Lomtevas jumped. Vera Lomtevas said that using the “Find My iPhone” app, the family was able to trace her son’s movements as he made his way to the George Washington Bridge, and that family members repeatedly urged police to stop Lomtevas. They were allegedly told by officers not to worry and that Lomtevas would be stopped. Despite those assurances, NYPD and the Port Authority allowed Lomtevas to walk on the ascending walkway and halfway across the span of the southern pedestrian pathway without being challenged in any way, the complaint contends.

NYPD failed to respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

According to a copy of his autopsy report, Lomtevas died of blunt force trauma to his torso, head and neck. The lungs were reportedly normal, without much water inside them, suggesting he died on impact before his reflex to inhale kicked in.

Lomtevas had always been a happy, easy-going and charming young man, according to his family. But the summer before his first year of college his demeanor began to change – which they only noticed looking in retrospect. During that summer, Lomtevas attempted suicide once in August, roughly six weeks prior to his death on Oct. 5 at the George Washington Bridge.

Lomtevas grew up in Ozone Park, Queens and Dyker Heights, Brooklyn. He attended Fort Hamilton High School, where he was in the honor society, and had just started his first semester at Brooklyn College at the time of his death.

In a photo that ran in press reports of his death, Lomtevas is wearing black-rimmed glasses and a blue graduation gown, draped with a stole bearing the National Honor Society insignia.

“We knew Daniel to be like this all of his life,” Peter Lomtevas said, motioning to a photograph of Lomtevas with a bright smile. “This is a kid who graduated high school with a 90 percent average. Witty, funny and an incredibly talented writer. And literally, overnight, he became stone-faced. Whatever came over him, came over him incredibly swiftly.”

During his first suicide attempt, Lomtevas arrived at the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge early morning on Aug. 22 and climbed over the guardrail onto an engineering walkway. Once there, he called 911 pleading for help. After his rescue, Lomtevas admitted to police that he had attempted suicide and that a note would be found at his home.

In his August suicide note, Lomtevas wrote that he had felt suicidal for years and that he didn’t believe mental health could be treated effectively yet.

“We’ll all be forgotten someday and I prefer it sooner than later,” he wrote.

A second claim, which was filed by Bay Ridge resident Eugena Perlov and her daughter Diana, was filed on Jan. 26 and contends that the suicide of their husband and father, Vladimir Perlov, was foreseeable to the Port Authority, given the large number of suicides in recent years, and that the Port Authority has not taken meaningful steps to address the issue.

On the morning of Jan. 28, 2016, according to the complaint, Perlov drove on to the George Washington Bridge and pulled over, got out of his car and jumped from the north walkway. The impact of the fall caused severe damage to his torso and he died of his injuries at New York-Presbyterian/Allen Hospital.

In the years leading up to Perlov’s death, the Port Authority, the complaint states, “knew of the long history of jumping suicides from the walkways of the George Washington Bridge and the palpable danger the bridge presents to vulnerable individuals invited to use the bridge should the defendant fail to take remedial measures, including the implementation of suicide prevention barriers.”

In 2014, as part of a plan to replace the suspension ropes on the bridge, the Port Authority approved up to $47 million to build a barrier along the walkway.

Vera Lomtevas scoffed at the timeline the Port Authority has set for the construction of its barrier, which isn’t set to be completed until 2024.

“How many more people are going to die in that time?” she asked.

Firestone also believes the timeline is too slow.

“If a study came out that said 18 people were going to die on the bridge next year because of a mechanical issue, they’d shut it down and fix it,” Firestone said, quoting a suicide prevention advocate and documentary filmmaker from a New York Times report on the George Washington Bridge.

And while Firestone acknowledges that there are engineering hurdles that can take time to overcome, she questions why there hasn’t been any temporary fencing in the meantime. A chain-link fence had previously been placed on three bridges around Cornell University as a temporary barrier after several student suicides.

With a national suicide rate that has climbed 24 percent from 1999 to 2014, Firestone said the need for suicide barriers has become urgent.

“When you put up barriers, you say to people, ‘Your life matters,’” she said. “That’s important because one of things that happens with suicidal people is they feel they’re a burden, that people don’t care, would be better off without them.”

Six months after their son’s death, Vera and Peter Lomtevas continue to wonder what led their son to feel he had no other choice. Based on medical research, Peter Lomtevas theorizes that a gene, SKA2, which influences how the brain responds to stress, may have contributed. Or, perhaps, that the antidepressant and antianxiety drugs, duloxetine and clonazepam, Lomtevas was prescribed around a week before his death could have driven him over the edge. But there is no definitive answer.

“We still don’t know what it is,” Peter Lomtevas said. “And without that little barrier, a person’s a goner. Without a net, a gate or a fence – that’s it. Finito.”

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Francisco “Chico” Gonzales, 62, leaned against the fence outside of the Pink Houses Community Center in East New York, Brooklyn on a cold and bright March morning, smoking a cigarette without his hands while his fists balled up for warmth inside the pockets of his hoodie.

“Manslaughter is 15 years, let them give him the 10,” said Gonzales of the recent sentencing recommendation for former NYPD officer Peter Liang who fatally shot resident Akai Gurley in the unlit stairwell of one of the Pink Houses in 2014. Gurley, a tenant of the apartment complex, was coming down a darkened stairwell, because the lack of building maintenance allowed bulbs to burn out and elevators to stall, when Liang, frightened and with his gun drawn, shot into the darkness and killed Gurley.

Liang was convicted of manslaughter in February and on March 23rd, Brooklyn D.A. Kenneth Thompson asked Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun to spare Liang prison time. Instead, Thompson recommended five years probation and six months house arrest, compared to the 15-year sentence that Liang faces for manslaughter.

For the tenants of the Pink Houses, one of the most dangerous housing projects in New York City, the upcoming sentencing hearing is an opportunity for the community’s safety concerns, such as poor maintenance which leaves hallways permanently darkened and elevators stalled, to be vindicated.

“It was not justified,” Gonzales said. “They say his gun discharged but still, he didn’t have to have his gun out.”

A long-time resident of the Pink Houses, Gonzales supports making an example out of the Liang trial. He hopes it would help to change the public perception of the NYPD officers, who, in his experience, always seem to come when it’s too late.

“I was shot right behind this building in 1975. Over a gold chain that wasn’t even real gold,” said Gonzales. “By the time they show up the crime has been done already, the person is shot, dead or whatever. They just come to investigate and get information, if there’s no witness then the guy gets to get away with it.”

Francisco “Chico” Gonzales, 62, sits at the makeshift reception desk at the Pink Houses Community Center. Photo by Amina Srna

Gonzales finished his cigarette and walked back into the Pink Houses Community Center, where he took a seat behind a weathered fiberboard desk, a makeshift reception. He swiveled his pleather office chair towards a t.v. and turns up the already loud volume for the news. To his left, an overweight man with a graying afro is fast asleep in his wheelchair.

The entire décor of the community center seems frozen in time, a haphazard amalgamation of dated grey and dark brown office furniture that makes the whole place (aside from two brand new violet pool tables) look as though it was built in the 70s and promptly forgotten.

This archaic presence is compounded by the residents that walk in on weekday mornings for the free lunches that the center provides for the senior citizens of the Pink Houses. Gonzales greeted his neighbors in between ruminating on the District Attorney’s recommendation.

The core of the problem for Gonzales is that the police officers sent to patrol the Pink Houses, one of New York City’s most dangerous housing projects, are largely unfamiliar with the area and inexperienced. Liang was no exception.

“Coming out of college, they’re not really street wise,” said Gonzales. “Show people cops that will know the neighborhood. That Chinese cop, he didn’t know this neighborhood.”

Since February, Gonzales’s sentiments have echoed throughout the news. Coverage and commentary of the trial and impending verdict have become platforms to scrutinize anything from police academy training to racism towards African Americans and Chinese Americans.

“He was a minority, so we are doing everything we can to show the community that we’re going after the cops,” said Noel Lazarus, the director of the Pink Houses Community Center. “To compound that, the D.A. now is saying that he should not get any time in prison. So why you go through a trial and then in the end you say he shouldn’t? He should have never been tried, he was made a scapegoat.”

Lazarus said that the 2014 incident of Liang shooting Gurley in a dark stairwell was not an isolated circumstance, that in fact, Liang’s fear is a daily reality of the residents who live in the Pink Houses, where burglars black out stairwells in order to rob residents.

“I was speaking to guy a couple days ago, this guy told me he got robbed three times, right in his building, so he got a gun,” said Lazarus.

“He says, coming up the elevator, the wind blew a door shut and he said he fired five shots, at no one. There was no one there. He said he never carried that gun again, and he’s talking about three four years ago. Because if there was someone there, whether someone to rob him or not, he would have shot them.”

The contrasting sentiments of the residents of the Pink Houses are echoed throughout the neighborhood. Outside, the streets that surround the Pink Houses are markedly empty, the glaring noon sun casting stark shadows on sidewalks. Katrina Wilson, 32, stood in a small sunlit patch a few blocks away from the Pink Houses and waited to catch the M14 bus to work.

“He could have asked a question before he shot him,” said Wilson. “I don’t think it was prevailed as justice. He could have served more time than what he is serving now.”

Further up, on Euclid Avenue, Joe Lewis, 40, sat on a picnic table at the deserted Cyprus Hills Playground, watching two men who met by the bathrooms for a drug deal. Lewis has been following the trial and does not know what the fair sentence should be. His concern is that Liang has been made a token for police brutality, and in the process, been stripped of his humanity.

“He lost everything he had,” Lewis said. “He lost his title as a police officer and as he progresses his life he’s going to be haunted with this. He shot someone who was unarmed. He’s scared for his life, he killed an innocent kid.”

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