A Community Stands Together
January 26, 2008
The violent death of a beloved local artist leaves a community in mourning and seeking answers
Stories of police using excessive force to apprehend a suspect are a fact of life in Los Angeles. As a product of the suburbs, however, I often dismissed such tales as media hype or the occasional result of human error. I believed that police officers performed a difficult and dangerous job for society, and I trusted that their intentions were ultimately good.
This faith was deeply shaken on Dec. 31, 2007, when my dear friend Michael Cho was shot and killed by two policemen in broad daylight, just a few blocks from his home.
The officers had received two calls about a possible vandalism suspect in a shopping center in La Habra, a suburb of Los Angeles. The second call informed the police that the supposed suspect was in the 7 Gold Liquor Store. At approximately 2 p.m., police officers confronted Mike with their guns drawn. Mike, who was holding a tire iron, began to walk away, as clearly captured by the liquor store surveillance device. The officers then moved toward him and opened fire, later claiming that he “made a motion to attack.” Although the police have not yet confirmed the number of shots fired, various news sources have reported that up to 10 shots may have been fired.
Mike’s senseless, violent death raised a plethora of questions. Why did the policemen have their guns drawn if they were only responding to a vandalism complaint? Moreover, the police and the major news reports have failed to mention that Mike suffered from a lifelong physical disability that left him with a severe limp and unable to run, let alone attack. What about this handicapped man of 5’8” and 140 lbs. did the police find so threatening that they felt it necessary to open fire? Could not the police have tried to disarm or warn him before opening fire and aiming to kill?
I wanted to believe that the police had thought they were doing the right thing, but I could not quiet the questions in my mind. These questions continue to haunt me as the La Habra Police Department has only released minimal information regarding Mike’s death. La Habra Police Chief Dennis Kies issued a vague statement saying “an officer’s response is dictated by the suspect and his demeanor,” and that it would be difficult to say at this point whether or not the response of the two officers was excessive. Further investigation, we were informed, would likely take months.
I have been close to Mike for 14 years. I loved him dearly, and he has meant more to me than I can possibly say. Mike lived his life with love and passion, and expressed himself through his art. Having graduated from UCLA with a major in art, his greatest dream in life was to attend Yale Graduate School’s art program. At the time of his death, he had been devoting most of his time to a program teaching disabled children about the history and creation of art.
Mike’s friends remember him as having a wonderful heart and a generous, peaceful nature; he was always the first to buy any hungry person a meal or offer a sad friend a shoulder to cry on. The fact that this amazing life was ended so abruptly is tragic.
It is absolutely essential that we make it known that excessive violence, especially when brought upon by a group of people established to protect the public, cannot and will not be tolerated. We, as a community, cannot remain passive; we cannot stay silent.
With the help of the Orange County Korean American Coalition, Mike’s family, friends and the supporting community have taken steps to demand a federal investigation. Do not allow Mike to be lost as another gun violence statistic. Please work with his family, friends and me to celebrate his life and ensure that we are guaranteed a federal investigation that will be done in a fair and speedy
manner.
If you are interested in signing the petition demanding a federal investigation, or learning more about how you can help, please e-mail friendsofmikecho@gmail.com.
Jennifer Park lives in Los Angeles and is a research coordinator at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.
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11 Responses to “A Community Stands Together”
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Once again, these trigger happy cops see an Asian man, they will want to fire. There is a deep seeded “hidden” racism against Asian American male in the society. I have advocate this for the past 25 decades and no one is really listening and Asian brothers keep dying in the hand of these trigger happy cops for no reason besides the fact that they are trigger happy and looking for any execuse to shoot a yellow man
Bergen Brunswig’s security cameras captured images of Wong and defendant from 1:23 a.m. to 1:41 a.m. on the morning of the murder. When first seen, the two appear to be walking side by side as they entered the north gate entrance to the company’s parking lot (the lot). A still frame from the security camera videotape showed defendant and Wong six seconds later. The two had moved approximately four or five feet further into the lot. Their relative positions had changed. Defendant was continuing to walk south, away from the Club, but Wong now was behind him. Her lower body appeared to be trying to pull away from defendant. Her right arm was extended forward and appears to be on defendant’s bent right arm. Defendant’s left arm is not visible, but defendant concedes the photograph “suggests [he] is holding onto some part of Ms. Wong’s body.” Ten minutes later, the videotape showed defendant and Wong3 approaching a short flight of stairs that led from the lot up into a concrete enclosure. One minute later, a camera showed defendant leaning over Wong at the foot of those stairs. Two minutes later, it showed defendant standing above Wong, walking backwards, and dragging her with him. The camera caught defendant leaning against an air conditioning unit in the enclosure, leaving and returning to the enclosure three times, and finally walking away from the area near where Wong’s body was located.
Wong’s body was discovered at approximately 3:30 a.m. on May 20. Three six-foot high concrete walls surrounded the enclosure in which Wong was found. The stairs leading to the enclosure were at its northwest corner. Wong’s body was in the southeast corner, behind the air conditioning unit that filled the center of the enclosure. The distance between the point inside the north gate where defendant can be seen on a photograph taken from the security videotape in front of Wong and possibly pulling her in the direction of the stairs leading to the enclosure and the foot of the stairs was 208 feet. The distance from the foot of the stairs to Wong’s body was 37 feet.
Wong had been “beaten very badly” about her face. Her bra was pushed up, her breasts were exposed, and her jeans and underpants were pulled down to just above her knees so that “her vaginal area was exposed.” Her underpants were soaked with blood. Pools of blood underneath her buttocks, as well as blood smears and streaks on and near her body, revealed that Wong had been turned from her stomach onto her back at some point and that her bloody hair had dragged across the south wall. Boot prints on Wong’s body and in the blood on the concrete floor in the enclosure had a pattern consistent with the boots that defendant was wearing at the Club. One of the boot print bruises was above Wong’s right breast.
Wong’s autopsy revealed severe injuries to the head and neck caused by a blunt instrument such as a fist or boot. Her nose was pushed to one side, and her chin had a gaping laceration. Bleeding in her neck muscles and hemorrhages in her eyes revealed that Wong had been strangled or choked and had experienced asphyxiation for a period of time. Injuries to a nipple and a wrist were consistent with bite marks. Wong’s right arm and elbow, as well as her buttocks, had injuries consistent with her having been dragged across a concrete surface while alive. Five of Wong’s ribs were fractured, and she had shoulder injuries consistent with someone stomping on her. Fractures on the front and back of Wong’s skull could have been caused by a strong person repeatedly shoving her head against a wall or onto concrete.4 Those two traumas caused bleeding inside the skull and swelling of the brain. At some point while Wong was alive, her tongue hemorrhaged when it “got caught, most likely between [her] teeth.”
The autopsy additionally revealed massive bleeding in the area of Wong’s vagina and anus. The opening of the vagina was cut, and a rigid object that was sharp and serrated had twice been thrust approximately four inches into the deep soft tissue of Wong’s perineal area between her vaginal and anal openings. Foreign material consistent with concrete was found inside the entire tract of this injury. The pathologist believed a knife or cylindrical steel rebar pipe had cut Wong’s vaginal opening and been thrust into the perineum. Wong’s anal opening also was cut, and the anus was dilated. The dilation could have been caused by the insertion of a penis, but the laceration was caused by a sharp object similar to the one inserted into the vaginal opening. Wong’s cervix was bruised. The “degree of trauma and associated bleeding” caused by the genital injuries established that Wong was alive when they were inflicted.
Good God!
If there is one, or that he/she/it would subscribe to concepts of the good, the bad, and the ugly.
But, pray tell, what could be the connection between the police killing of Cho and the brutalization of Wong?
The first is obvious: those trained to suppress and encouraged to practice the sadistic element of their innate sadomasochistic drives are the puppets of their masters and paychwck providers.
Juat wait till the new “Gulf” veterans return to populate our inner-city “streets.”
No, we don’t have to wait. Our homegrown misbegotten already infest the highways and the byways.
Juar watch your backs, EVERYone. The next “crazy” may have your number.
That said, it is also sane and logical to remember that 99% of the rest of us are just as scared and restive as the Chief High Poobahs want us to be.
Welcome, Ms. Park, to the ranks of conscientious objectors to ANY form of official brutality.
The individual species are spelled out in serial killers and wife-beaters and child molestors, but they are, sadly enough, mere products of social idiocies and cynical exploitations of “moralities” that bespeak impossibilites the while they practice everything they denounce. In public, that is.
When the most “advanced” and “sophisticated” and puissant societies of this world can reach the point of understanding that its bloody and mindless and self-serving beliefs and actions are, in fact and reality, COUNTERproductive, then so shall humankind, finally, not very likely at that, proceed to the neverneverland of true civility.
And the real enemies of humankind, the individual, internal problems few, if any, ever solve, will begin to be addressed.
Like hormonal aggressions, the true parameters of human sexuality, the knowledge and understanding of what moves and motivates and mocks each and every one of us.
Frank Eng
That’s right, Eng, but don’t forget to spell out the killers of unborn children in your self-serving diatribe.
How do we reach Ms. Park to coordinate some long-term studies on the effects of amphetamines in young children?
It’s only a fantasy, Wilma.
애도를 표합니다…. 부디 하늘나라에서 행복하시길 바랍니다… 그리고 너무 화가 납니다… 사람을 지켜줘야 할 경찰이 오히려 사람을 죽이다니… 어처구니가 없군요..
이승에서 못다한 꿈.. 저승에서 꼭 이루시길…
멀리 한국에서 몇자 적어봅니다..
Dear Aaron Smith:
Mmm, self-serving? How?
Diatribe? Likely.
But the “morality” issue in “abortion” lies, in this view, with the protagonists in the individual cases, and NOT, again in this view, with those who insist THEIR “morality” trumps anyone else’s.
Personally, I find the IMmorality of a society that blandly and blindly condones the consigment of, likely, a “majority” of “us,” the pejoratively “alive” that is, to relative squalor and hopelessness the while it insists that Petri-dish “life” is sacrocsanct, along with the idiot corollary of said syllogism, namely, that scientific study by way of the content of such sacrosanct Petri dishes is blasphemous AND “immoral,” illegal as well?
No, Aaron, I, for one, “value” the life and lives of those putatively “living” today, far beyond and above the “rights” and “claims” of most stages of PRE-”life.”
Frank Eng
P.S.: To carry your argument further, how would you classuify the “seed” of the onanist? Or the discharge of the menses?
거짓을 위한 정의도 없어야 하고,
“정의라는 핑계를 위한 그리고 정의를 위한 거짓도 없어야 합니다”
거짓과 정의(正義)는 동일시 되지 않습니다.
누가 보더라도 상식적으로 과잉반응(과잉대처)으로 도저히 이해가 안 가는 사건입니다.
사건이 어떻게 결말 지어질지 모르겠지만 혹시나 이글을 읽게 되는 관계자들, 경찰과 마이클 조의 잘 잘못을 떠나서 행여 소설 쓰시지 마시고 정의실현을 위해 진실되게 처리해 주십시요.
그것이 관계자 여러분들 당신이 해야 할 일입니다.
고인의 명복을 빕니다.
편히 쉬십시요.
Does anyone here actually and truly believe that anyone seen carrying a tire iron into a liquor store as strange behavior? And furthermore, that the police responding to a vandalism call (where someone has been violently smashing out car windows along a whole block) might be VERY cautious and prepare for the worst kind of public rampage? Do you somehow feel that citizens have the RIGHT to carry tire irons, lead pipes, bats, and other potential weapons with them into a Kwikie Mart? If a man came into YOUR gas station, or YOUR liquor store carrying a tire iron…would you feel the slightest bit of fear? If he was Black? White? Native American? No citizen has any business walking into or out of a liquor store in America with a tire iron. Sorry, but asking for confrontation while exuding a “peaceful” demeanor is still asking for a confrontation. You are asking WAY too much of your police force when you are carrying a potential weapon and you walk away from them while failing to comply with their orders. Sure, the police should have better non-leathal training, but our society has come to a point where too many people feel that the government or big business “should have protected me from myself” and from my own isolence and stupid behavior. Take some responsibility for your own actions for a change. Alas, I feel that this is now asking too much from too many Americans.
Rusty:
By your perceptions and your reactions, it would appear that you would “justify” Javert’s pursuit of that thief of a loaf of bread in “Les Miserables.”
The gendarmes and the police of ANY society are but the guaridans and protectors of their employers.
“Law” and “order” are not a television series, both exist ONLY because some members of “society” believe in and subscribe to them. And, voluntarily, act in accord.
Those who do NOT believe in and subscribe are dubbed “criminals: and free “game” for the overseers of societal conformity.
Shoot someone who crosses the Arizona “border” as a “legal” solution to a socioeconomic conundrum?
Beat a “black” motorist who “resists” as a “legal” enforcement of “stop and search”?
Well. the way things are going today, all of the foregoing is but child’s play next to the potential invocation of “executive privilege” in the face of “terrorist” threat.
And, “a peaceful demeanor” is “asking” for “confrontation”?
As for “weapons,” is a hurled “epithet” one? A weapon, that is. Or mere size and physique?
No, Rusty, our police DO need better “sensitivity” training More to the point, those who qualify for rookie cop MUST, or at least should be, “screened” for psychotic bent.