Asian American Empowerment - Stereotypes Cited in Police Slaying

Lawyer for Bereaved Family Blames Race

By Cecilia Kang
©2003 San Jose Mercury News
October 17, 2003

An attorney who represents the family of a Vietnamese woman fatally shot by police says racial stereotypes and insensitivities might have played a role in the killing, and Asian-American advocates agree.

Felicita Ngo, the lead attorney for the family of Bich Cau Thi Tran, said that if the victim had been white, police officer Chad Marshall might not have fired at the 25-year-old mother of two. And if Marshall had known the difference between the vegetable peeler Tran was holding -- which is commonly used in Southeast Asia -- and a cleaver, which police say the peeler appeared to be, she wouldn't be dead.

"Race has played a part in this because the officer didn't know what the peeler was,'' said Ngo, who is representing Tran's boyfriend, her two young children and father. "If she was white, he wouldn't have done it because there is a stereotype of her being a foreigner and threatening."

Ngo made her remarks Thursday in a speech hosted by the Asian Law Alliance in Menlo Park. The grand jury is scheduled to begin its hearing on the case Oct. 21.

Tran was killed July 13 after officers responded to a call that a child was wandering unattended in the neighborhood. When the officers encountered Tran in her kitchen, she was holding a vegetable peeler commonly used in Southeast Asia, which police said appeared to be a cleaver. Police said that Tran threatened officers with the object, called a dao bao, which has a six-inch blade. Marshall then fired at Tran with a single gunshot that pierced her chest. Tran's boyfriend, Dang Bui, has told the Mercury News that she didn't threaten the officer.

The shooting has sparked outrage from the Vietnamese community, with demonstrations at City Hall this week and critics accusing the police department and county coroner's office of an unfair investigation. They question how the 4-foot-11-inch, 90-pound woman could have threatened the officer.

San Jose police have responded by reaching out to the Vietnamese-American community through neighborhood meetings and a radio campaign expressing sympathy and regret.

Advocates at the speech Thursday added another layer of complexity to the case with questions of whether Tran's ethnicity played a role in the shooting.

"The way I see it, if she spoke English well and if she lived in a different neighborhood, maybe the outcome would have been different," said Richard Konda, executive director of the Asian Law Alliance.

At the gathering hosted by the Asian Law Alliance, Cynthia Lee, an author of a book on how racial stereotypes can play a role in police use of deadly force, said racial images can affect a police officer's action on a subconscious level.

Among other examples, Lee mentioned the 1997 shooting of a Taiwanese-American man in Rohnert Park, who was killed in front of his home by police responding to neighbors' 911 calls. Police say Kuan Chung Kao was drunk, making martial-arts poses and hit a police car with a 6-foot-long stick before being shot. Asian-American leaders criticized police for jumping to racial stereotypes that all Asian men are proficient in martial arts. The family filed a suit against the city for wrongful death and reached a settlement of $1 million in 2001.

No Indictment for San Jose Officer

A Santa Clara County grand jury refused today to indict a San Jose police officer in connection with the July 13 shooting death of Cau Bich Tran, a 25-year-old mother of two.

The 18 grand jurors -- 11 women and seven men -- arrived at their decision after deliberating a bit more than two hours. The ruling came after seven days of testimony in a rare public grand jury hearing.

The brevity of the deliberations indicates that jurors strongly believed that Marshall acted properly, according to San Jose Police Officers' Association President Don DeMers.

"The amount of time that they deliberated reflected the fact that there wasn't much doubt on the part of the grand jury," DeMers said.

"We gave the grand jury the facts, we gave them the law and they did the rest," said Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Dan Nishigaya. "They were the ones to speak for the community. They made their decision and we respect it."

Dang Bui, Tran's boyfriend, who witnessed the killing, said he was disappointed with the decision. The family has already filed a civil claim against the city, and Asian legal activists are vowing to pursue the matter in federal court.

Police were called out to the Trans' home that night on a report of a child running unattended in the street. By the time they arrived, the child had returned to his home, where the officers said they could hear a woman screaming.

The death stemmed from a fast-moving confrontation in Tran's small apartment, during which she was holding a 10-inch Asian vegetable peeler, an instrument police officer Chad Marshall believed was a cleaver. While Marshall testified that he fired after Tran shook the blade at him and appeared ready to throw it, the boyfriend said she simply gesturing at a locked door and that police misunderstood her.

The shooting resulted in outrage throughout the Vietnamese community, which argued that the police department did not need to use such force on a woman who stood less than 5 feet tall and weighed 90 pounds.

The police department immediately began running radio ads expressing condolences for Tran's death on local Vietnamese language radio stations and called for the community to share their concerns with the department regarding the shooting.

Supporters of the woman's family today called upon the FBI to investigate the case. Tran's family has already filed an excessive force claim with the city and supporters are hoping federal authorities will begin an investigation into whether Tran's civil rights were violated.

"We're going to seek federal involvement in this case," Asian law Alliance Director Richard Konda said.

Konda was disappointed that the grand jury did not look closer for contradictions among the police officers that testified.

"I am very disappointed that the grand jury failed to look at all the discrepancies in the officers' testimony." Konda said.

Bay City News contributed to this report.