Photo by Dan McQuade
Members of D.C.’s Asian community are upset with the Metropolitan Police Department, after a decision to move the department’s Asian Liaison Unit from its office at the Gallery Place shopping center in Chinatown.
The Washington Times reports that MPD justified closing the office because the five officers and supervising sergeant stationed there were spending most of their time working the beat and using the space mostly for storing equipment. Even though Chief Cathy Lanier told the Times the liaison group is not being disbanded, Chinatown residents and business owners are distressed that the lack of a physical base in the neighborhood could hinder police interactions with the Asian community and open the door to more crime:
But members of the Chinatown community are not happy, saying they fought to secure the popular unit for the commercial corridor because of the language and cultural needs of Asian merchants in dealing with police and fighting spates of crime in the heavily trafficked area. They said the decision was made without their input. As far as they know, their prized and effective unit is moving out of the neighborhood.
The Asian Liaison Unit was established in 1996, and moved into Gallery Place in 2004 for an annual rent of $1. An MPD spokeswoman told the Times the department actually pays $1,450 a month for occupancy and upkeep costs. Gallery Place management offered MPD a smaller space for incidental tasks like paperwork, but going forward, the unit will be operated from police headquarters at 300 Indiana Avenue NW.
The real rub, though, is that representatives of the Asian community say they were not notified before MPD decided to move the liaison unit.
Furthermore, the news about this liaison group comes just days a New York Times report detailing frustrations with MPD’s Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit, a group that while widely praised for its community outreach, has come under criticism for not moving quickly enough to train officers in dealing with crimes motivated by sexual orientation bias.
