Asian Fortune Your source for all things Asian American
By Dottie Tiejun Li
D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier fielded questions and comments from disgruntled citizens and business people Wednesday night (Dec. 5) over the abrupt shutting down of the Asian Liaison Unit’s longtime substation in Chinatown. By the end of the hastily scheduled and occasionally tense meeting, a somewhat chastened Chief promised to maintain a permanent police presence in the enclave and to seek community input on how and where a new base would operate.
As first reported by Asian Fortune November 28, Gallery Place, which has provided a free lease of office space for The Metropolitan Police Department’s special Asian Liaison Unit on the ground floor of 616 H Street, NW since 2004, asked MPD to consider vacating the space, so they could lease it out. MPD agreed, surprising and shocking residents and members of the business community, who were not consulted. The closing ended a Chinatown presence that began when the Asian Liaison Unit was formed in 1996. Because of the lack of official information, rumors swirled that the Liaison Unit was being disbanded, and criticism mounted against both the Chief and Gallery Place.
“When everybody leaves here tonight, I want everybody to be smiling and happy,” Chief Lanier said in opening remarks. About 100 people jammed into a warm meeting room in the Chinatown Community Cultural Center, located one flight of stairs above the now vacant police substation, to hear an explanation from the Chief. While many appeared mollified, not everyone was satisfied and efforts to repair strained relations will continue.
According to the Chief, discussion of closing down the office began with an emailed letter from Paula McDermott, General Manager of Gallery Place. (The Chief said the email was received “three weeks ago,” but a copy showed it was sent September 12.) McDermott inquired about the headquarters space. “We ask because we rarely see anyone in there. If it is not important for the use of the unit’s officers, then the owners would be willing to attempt to lease it to someone else, thereby relieving MPD of the responsibility for maintaining it” McDermott wrote. (The city spends about $1,450 in monthly occupancy expenses.)
Chief Lanier said she looked into how the Chinatown substation is utilized and discovered, she said, it is often vacant. The officers of the special unit, which operates in areas of high Asian population and businesses citywide (see story: Life on the Streets with the Asian Liaison Unit), actually spent little time there, according to the Chief. She told the Chinatown gathering crowd the officers’ lockers are located at the new First District Station, and that’s where they report for work before going out on duty. So, she says, she made the decision to vacate the office at 6th and H, in the shadow of the colorful Chinatown ArchWay.
But no public announcement was issued. Instead, word leaked out, and in the absence of official information, community anger began to simmer. As Asian Fortune began reporting the story, pressure mounted on the police department and the “community meeting” was scheduled. Last week, Gallery Place told Asian Fortune that it would consider allowing the Unit to have “access to a fully operational command center located within the Gallery Place building.”
“There’s no plans to decrease the number of people,” Chief Lanier told the audience, composed of Chinatown residents, many of them elderly, and a mix of business people and neighborhood activists. “There’s no plans to pull out of Chinatown.”
The Chief asked Sgt. Kenny Temsupasiri, profiled in the original Asian Fortunereporting on the Unit, to tell the citizens how it functions. He explained it is currently a city-wide team of six full-time officers and 29 specially trained “affiliate” officers working to deter crime against Asian businesses and residents in a number of neighborhoods. The Chief then discussed her push to get officers out of offices and onto the streets, aided by advances in communications and computer technology which keep them in touch.
She stressed that no changes are planned in the way police now patrol Chinatown, which has seen a marked decrease in crime in recent years, referring to the ten additional officers who are not part of the special Unit but are assigned to patrol there regularly. That seemed to lessen the concerns of many at the meeting, but some of the older residents expressed apprehension about losing the physical link to the police. Others remained angry over the lack of notice and consultation.
While the Chief said she is willing to accept the offer of Gallery Place for new space, Leroy Thorpe, president of the East Central Civic Association was not satisfied.
“Chief, what you’re saying is, you’re offering me a sandwich, but there’s no meat on it. And if you’re a vegetarian, there’s no vegetables. And what I mean by that is that it’s critical that it not just be open, but that it also be manned,” he declared.
The Chief responded that a fully operational substation would take at least nine officers to operate 24 hours a day all week. But she offered to explore, as a compromise, the hiring of a community liaison civilian who could help staff the office and deal personally with Chinatown residents and visitors who might walk in seeking assistance. She also appealed to the audience to provide input on where a new base should be located, and how it could better serve the community.
Gallery Place did not send a representative to the community meeting.
David Chung, Commissioner of D.C. Commission on Asian Pacific Islander Affairs, politely but firmly posed a series of questions to the Chief about what he called the “lack of transparency and consultation” regarding the closing. Chief Lanier replied that she instructed members of the Unit to begin notifying members of the community about the changes, but there is a substantial amount of conflicting information about that.
“The ALU was not responsible for distributing the information to the community,” Linda Wang, Operating Director at the Chinatown Community Cultural Center said with emotion evident in her voice. And she said her own experience with the unit is that the office has, in fact, been utilized. “The Officers are here in the Unit,” she stressed, noting that her office is right above the substation. “It’s not just used as a locker room; and they work directly our youth all the time.” (CCCC is directly above the ALU on the second floor of 616 H.) “Our youth seek advice from these officers. We hope the ALU can move back as soon as possible and can continue to work with us right away.” Had her organization not been in the same building, she said, she wouldn’t have known that the unit was moving.
Asian Fortune’s experience in developing a story on the work of the unit before news of the closure broke seemed to differ from the Chief’s account, expressed at the meeting, about how she tried to inform the community. Asian Fortune is developing additional on that situation.
After the meeting, an obviously tired Chief told Asian Fortune she values the work of the unit, saying, “I think the Asian Liaison Unit it very effective. I can’t take anything away from them.” And she expressed regret over the mishandling of communication with the Asian American community. “The problem is that they’re [the ALU] trying to serve a community that speaks multiple languages. Information doesn’t get out to everybody equally at the same time, and if it doesn’t get to everyone at the same time, it starts rumors. The reason I didn’t start with a community meeting is because anybody who doesn’t make it to a community meeting, they’re just gonna get rumors.”
The Chief may have set many rumors to rest with her patient, calm explanations, even as her explanation of the lack of notice and consultation leads to more questions. She remained unruffled in the face of criticism while facing an unsettled audience of Asian community members. But she says she’s not finished yet with the matter.
“We’ve still got work to do. We’ve got to find a space,” she said.
THIS STORY IS STILL DEVELOPING. CHECK BACK FOR UPDATES AS ASIAN FORTUNE COVERS THE CLOSURE OF THE ASIAN LIAISON UNIT’S CHINATOWN OFFICE.
