Controversy Widens Over Loss of Chinatown Police HQ

By Dottie Tiejun Li

Washington, D.C.—The Metropolitan Police Department finds itself still mired in controversy over a month after word leaked it was closing the longtime Chinatown headquarters of the Asian Liaison Unit, a team which combats crime against Asian American businesses and individuals citywide. Despite a promise from Chief Cathy Lanier to reverse the decision, made at a hastily convened public meeting, the sub-station has been completely cleared out, and community leaders complain they are being kept in the dark about plans to re-establish it.

As Asian Fortune reported last month, Gallery Place, which provided free lease of office space on the ground floor of 616 H Street, NW since 2004, quietly asked MPD in September to consider vacating the space, which they said appeared little used. MPD agreed, shocking residents and members of the business community, who were not consulted. The ALU has had a facility in Chinatown since it was formed in 1996 after lobbying from Chinatown civic leaders.

The decision was never officially announced, infuriating Chinatown community activists and business people, who learned about it from unofficial sources in mid-and-late November. Chief Lanier tried to quell the ensuing uproar by appearing at a tense community meeting held at the Chinese Community Cultural Center, located one flight up from the sub-station at Gallery Place, on December 5. She promised the approximately 100 civic leaders, residents and business people present to negotiate with Gallery Place to keep the office open and arrange for a permanent base there.

“There’s no plans to decrease the number of people, there’s no plans to pull out of Chinatown,” she said. “There’s no plans to even take the symbols, the markings of the Asian Liaison Unit down and away from the people and the community that fought for it.” The Chief said she would work closely with the Asian American community about how the office should operate and promised to look into hiring a “community liaison civilian” to help staff the office and deal with Chinatown residents and visitors who might walk in seeking assistance while the officers are on patrol.

But days later, the ground floor office was emptied, the walls and doors stripped of any sign of the police. No new police space has opened in that building or elsewhere, and community leaders questioned by Asian Fortune insist they have not gotten any information from MPD. In response to a question from Asian Fortune, MPD spokesperson Gwendolyn Crump emailed this statement: “A position description for a community outreach coordinator bilingual in English and Mandarin has been created and is in the approval process.” However, she refused to directly answer questions about the status of the headquarters or plans to re-open in Chinatown, stating only, “Members of the Asian Liaison Unit are still on the streets continuing to serve the community. They maintain lockers in the First District [outside Chinatown], as they have for the past several years.”

Gallery Place would only issue a terse statement repeating its position that the police are welcome to use space in the building’s “fully operational command center.”

The Asian Liaison Unit is currently a city-wide team of six full-time officers, augmented when necessary with members of a specially trained group of 29 “affiliate” officers from various sub-stations. They work to with Asian businesses and residents in a number of neighborhoods. At the December 5 meeting, Chief Lanier stressed that no changes are planned in the way police now patrol Chinatown, referring to ten additional officers who are not part of the ALU but patrol Chinatown. While that comforted many at the meeting, some of the older residents expressed concern about losing a physical link to the police, while others remained angry over the lack of notice and consultation.

That anger has intensified in the weeks since.

Linda Lee, a retired community activist who worked to bring the original police sub-station to Chinatown, expressed surprise that the ALU office closed and that no one has contacted her. “They were supposed to be moving back or finding a new site,” she said. “I need to find out what’s going on.”

Duane Wang, Chairman of Chinatown Steering Committee said, “I was shocked to learn what happened to the unit. They told a story to us. The Chief said she’d do something about it, but she did nothing.”

With community concerns and complaints again reaching fever pitch, Soohyun “Julie” Koo of the Mayor’s Office on Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs announced another public meeting will be held at 7 p.m. January 7 at the Chinatown Community Cultural Center, 616 H Street, N.W. (Visit www.AsianFortune. com for coverage of that meeting.)

But longtime Chinatown restaurateur and civic leader Tony Cheng, who has worked closely with the Asian Liaison Unit over the years, is not satisfied. “I didn’t get any information about a meeting on Jan. 7th, he said. “The unit’s moved. I don’t understand why the Chief didn’t keep her word. She told us at the last meeting that they’d stay. What’s happening?”

Linda Wang, Director of Operations for the Chinatown Community Cultural Center complains that she cannot get MPD or Gallery Place management to tell her if they have been negotiating about workspace, as Chief Lanier promised. “Sgt. Kenny Temsupasiri of the Liaison Unit called us to ask the Cultural Center whether we had any space for the unit,” she said. “Why are you soliciting space while you have space? This is crazy. But I think it’s beyond his control. It looks to me that the police have no intention of moving back to the space they just moved out of. MPD is not doing what it is supposed to do.”

Neither Gallery Place nor MPD will say if the free lease, which was supposed to run to 2014, has been terminated. In an email exchange with Wang, Koo stated she was informed by Chief Lanier that “We agreed to an extension but not when the lease is up. That is all I have heard for now.” Still, the office has been vacated.

Regardless of where the substation is physically located, the actual police presence on Chinatown’s streets is not likely to change. Chief Lanier said she looked into how the Chinatown sub-station was utilized and discovered it was often vacant. The Chief says new technology allows officers to get out of station houses and on to the streets, for more effective policing.