Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Thu, 19 Nov 1992 09:30:42 -0500
From:         Joyce Brabner <ah881@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject:      US: Police Harass SE Asian-Americans

This is Part 2 of 2 related articles.  At a recent Philadelphia
conference on anti-Asian violence, young SE Asian Americans spoke
out against police "photo sweeps".  Is something like this happening
in YOUR community?  Please let me know.

           POLICE PHOTO SWEEPS ANGER ASIANS: THEY WEREN'T ARRESTED,
                   YET THEIR PICTURES ENDED UP IN MUG BOOKS

                    THEY FEAR BEING MISTAKEN FOR CRIMINALS.

                               By Jennifer Lin

                   Philadelphia Inquirer: October 25, 1992

       Jon Nguyen was talking to a career counselor about becoming a
     teacher or paralegal when he was called to the dean's office at
     Upper Darby High School.

       Two Upper Darby detectives were waiting. They asked Nguyen to come
     to the police station with them because they needed his help in
     investigating a series of brutal robberies against Vietnamese
     families.

       Everyone in the Asian community was talking about the vicious home
     invasions by young Asian gang members who forced their way into
     houses, tied up victims, held them at gunpoint and threatened
     retaliation if they went to police.

       Nguyen, 18, a Vietnamese refugee who was troubled by the home
     invasions, says he went willingly to the station. But when he got
     there, the detectives said they had to photograph him and later told
     him that he resembled a police sketch of one of the suspects.

       "I don't remember them asking me if they could take my picture,"
     Nguyen says. Police say he agreed.

       Nor, Nguyen says, does he remember the detectives saying his
     photograph would be included in a mug book of Asian criminals and
     suspected gang members.

       But it is.

       Now, when there's a home invasion in Upper Darby, victims are
     shown the mug book - and Nguyen's picture.

       The photographing of Asian Americans who have not been accused of
     any crime is angering community leaders in Philadelphia and the
     region and, they say, breeding mistrust of police at a time when
     they should be building bridges into Asian neighborhoods.

       Nguyen has no arrest record and no disciplinary record at Upper
     Darby High School. He says his only "gang" is made up of Vietnamese
     friends with whom he plays volleyball every night.

       Still, Nguyen says he is dogged by the thought that he will be
     held in suspicion as long as his picture remains in the mug book.

       "What if I look like someone who did rob a house, and they arrest
     me instead and put me in jail?" he asks. "There goes my whole life."

       In interviews with The Inquirer, a dozen Philadelphia-area men and
     teenage boys - all refugees from Vietnam or Cambodia - say they were
     pressured by police to be photographed.

       Police approached them on street corners, at a Philadelphia
     playground, in a game room and at a pool hall, they say.

       They say they gave in because they were too intimidated by police
     to refuse - or didn't know they could. And they say they fear that
     they are being singled out by police for being Asians in the wrong
     place at the wrong time and that the photos constitute guilt by
     association.

       For those, like Jon Nguyen, whose images are being captured, there
     is fear that the photos will come back to haunt them and lead to
     their being wrongly implicated in crimes.

       Police say that they have the right to photograph subjects and
     that they need to gather photographs of suspected members of Asian
     gangs.

       Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Neal says investigators
     are operating "well within the confines of the law" in taking
     photographs.

       "We're not picking out one particular group or one particular
     individual," Neal said.

       In one incident a year ago, detectives stopped and photographed a
     group of Vietnamese teens at a Southwest Philadelphia playground in
     order to start collecting intelligence on possible gang activity. In
     another episode last January, detectives entered a Kensington pool
     hall minutes after ahomicide around the corner, to photograph and
     interview patrons - all of whom were Asians - after getting a tip
     that the suspect was inside. That led to an arrest.  But in this
     clash of individual rights versus community safety, several civil
     liberties experts say the police have gone too far.

       The issue of police photographs is disconcerting to the Asian
     American community, which is already fearful to turn to police for
     help.

       "Police have a difficult task ahead of them," said Hoang Tran,
     head of the Asian American Youth Association in Southwest
     Philadelphia. "They want cooperation from the community, but then
     they do things to violate and push the community away from them -
     things like photographing their children."

       Philadelphia police take photographs of suspected Asian gang
     members in the same way that they gather intelligence on other
     organized-crime groups,such as the Mafia or Jamaican drug gangs,
     said Capt. Edward J. Kachigian,commander of the Organized
     Crime/Intelligence Unit. Some photos are taken through surveillance;
     others are snapped after people are approached in public places.

       The Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia has received
     complaints of photo sweeps only from the Asian American community,
     said Karen L. Black, an attorney who runs the center's Police
     Misconduct Hotline.

       Neighborhood activists - especially those who work with youths
     from Southeast Asia, the Asian American group most likely to fit a
     gang profile- said certain pockets of the city faced more police
     scrutiny than others.

       Tran estimated that 90 percent of the teens in his neighborhood
     had been stopped by police for photographs. Deborah Wei, president
     of Asian Americans United, said half of the refugee boys that she
     taught last year at University City High School - or about 10 - also
     had been subjects of picture-taking.

       "In our countries - Cambodia or Vietnam - the police are the law.
     They can do a lot of things," said Samien Nol, executive director of
     the Southeast Asian Mutual Assistance Associations, a coalition of
     social services for refugees.
       "But here is a free country. There's law and a Constitution," Nol
     said. "Some people might know about civil rights and the
     Constitution. But a lot are not aware."

       At the Upper Darby police station, Detective Glenn Gamber told Jon
     Nguyen that he looked like a police sketch of a suspect in a home
     invasion. Three young men - described as Vietnamese of Chinese
     descent - forced their way into the home, tied up two victims with
     telephone cords, trashed the house and stole jewels and cash.

       Nguyen said Gamber had shown him a mug book of Asians, as well as
     a thick stack of Polaroid photos supplied by Philadelphia police,
     and demanded that he identify the people behind the home invasion.

       Nguyen said he had no idea who was involved and spent hours trying
     to convince detectives of that.

       He returned home, shaken and angry. No charges were ever brought
     against Nguyen, but he was worried about the photograph taken by
     detectives.

       "I haven't done anything wrong, so why did they take my picture
     like that? Am I a criminal?" Nguyen said.

       Nguyen said he called Gamber and asked what would become of his
     photograph. "I was told, 'Don't worry, we threw it away,' " Nguyen
     said.

       His photograph remains in Upper Darby's newly compiled mug book of
     Asian criminals and suspected gang members. The black binder
     includes 23 mug shots taken after suspects were arrested, as well as
     12 non-arrest photos.

       Asked about Nguyen's photograph, Gamber said: "Everything was
     explained to Jon. He agreed to be photographed. . . . He was one of
     the nicest kids I ever met."

       "All the photos were legally obtained or, with others, people gave
     us their permission to take them," Gamber said of the mug book. "I
     don't see a problem with it."

       Under federal law, police can take surveillance photographs of
     people in public places, such as protesters at a demonstration or
     organized-crime bosses at a mob funeral.

       Once police stop someone - even for just a minute - that
     constitutes detention. And they have to be acting on more than just
     a hunch or rumor that a person was involved in a crime to detain
     that person, civil rights lawyers say.

       Stopping or detaining someone simply on the grounds that the
     person is the same race as a crime suspect is unconstitutional, said
     David Rudovsky, a civil rights attorney who also lectures at the
     University of Pennsylvania law school. Even if the person stopped is
     a suspected gang member, Rudovsky said, that reason is "too remote."

       If someone is then pressured in to having his picture taken, that
     is "going too far," said Stefan Presser, legal director of the
     American Civil Liberties Union in Philadelphia. "To stop you, they
     have to have some reason to suspect that you committed a crime, and
     it had better be better than you're an Asian in a neighborhood that
     just had a crime committed by an Asian."

       Pennsylvania law sets even more  limits on photographing
     teenagers, restricting it to suspects on the verge of being arrested
     for such serious crimes as armed robbery, rape, assault or murder.
     If a juvenile is not found guilty, the photos must be destroyed.

       James Anderson, executive director of the Juvenile Court Judges'
     Commission, a state agency that sets court standards, said the
     intent of the law was to prevent indiscriminate photo-taking, as
     well as to protect innocent  juveniles  from  having their  pictures
     used  in future investigations.

       Anderson said that if police were stopping juveniles for
     photographs because they fit a criminal profile, that was "clearly
     inappropriate."

       In Upper Darby, police were granted court orders to photograph and
     fingerprint "five or six" Vietnamese juveniles in connection with
     their investigation of home invasions earlier this year, said
     Detective Gamber.

       "Were they specific suspects? No. But did their names come up or
     did we have reason to believe they may have been involved? Yes,"
     Gamber said.

       Even though none of the teenagers has been charged with a crime,
     their photos remain in Upper Darby's Asian mug book. "The
     investigation is not complete," Gamber said.

       William Ryan, district attorney for Delaware County, said the
     state's juvenile code was vaguely worded in regard to photographing
     and fingerprinting juveniles. "I'd be the first to admit that the
     act isn't clear," Ryan said. He added that the court orders had been
     sought "out of an abundance of caution."

       Kachigian, of the Philadelphia police, said organized-crime
     detectives would go to a location to photograph Asians in response
     to a specific crime when they had "reasonable belief" that the
     person who committed the crime was in that place. He cited, for
     example, the Kensington pool hall, where detectives did arrest one
     of the people who was photographed.

       "We're not just walking down the street and stopping someone,"
     Kachigian said. "If we have received specific information of a
     crime, or if we have information of a gang operating or hanging out
     in a particular area, we will move into that area taking photos and
     investigating people."

       The organized-crime unit lends its photographs of Asians - both
     what it calls the "Oriental Photo Book" of 386 arrest shots, as well
     as extensive files of loose Polaroid shots of suspected gang members
     - to suburban police forces.

       Kachigian said non-arrest photos were thrown out if detectives
     could not establish through arrest records, informants or
     surveillance that a person had been involved in "criminal activity"
     or linked to a known gang. By then, say many of those photographed,
     the mistrust of police is already at work.

       Tilong To and Chhaila Sot want to know what police are doing with
     their photographs.

       Both were stopped and photographed near 45th and Sansom Streets.

       The neighborhood of neglected row houses and ragtag stores is an
     urban village for Cambodian and Laotian refugees. Every night, the
     corner is busy with women selling grilled chicken wings, teens
     hanging out and kids running up and down the sidewalk.
       Police see the neighborhood another way. They say it's home to a
     gang called Dead Zone Posse (also called the Danger Zone Posse). In
     the last two years, the area has been the scene of several
     homicides, gang fights and assaults.

       And photo sweeps.

       On a spring day in 1991, To, 17, and Sot, 20, said they were
     standing on the sidewalk with about a half-dozen friends when
     detectives approached them:

       "We want to take some pictures," one said.

       The Cambodians say they balked and turned to walk away.

       " 'You walk away, OK. We either do it here or we're going down to
     the station,' " To recalled one of the detectives' saying.

       The youths resisted and shouted at the detectives. In minutes,
     backup police cars and a van arrived.

       "There was no choice for us," said To, a senior at Franklin
     Learning Center. "One way or another, they were going to get our
     pictures."

       They said the detectives took names and addresses and began lining
     people up for photos, grouping some of the teens on a bench and
     taking separate shots of others. They told one youth to take off his
     hat for his picture.

       Several other teens gave similar versions of the episode in
     separate interviews. All requested that their names not be used.

       Kachigian said he had no knowledge of the incident, explaining
     that he was not named head of the organized-crime unit until the
     summer of 1991.

       A few months later, Sot was playing pool inside a now-closed game
     room and video store on 45th Street. He said a detective entered the
     store and said: Get your picture taken - or else we'll do it at the
     station.

       "He didn't ask nothing," Sot said.

       To and Sot say the photo-taking episodes have left them resentful
     and paranoid. "It seems like Asians now are criminals," To said.

       In other cities, the practice of building Asian photo files has
     drawn sharp criticism.

       Last year, San Jose, Calif., police were pressured by the Asian
     American community to stop using an Asian mug book of arrest and
     non-arrest photos. Community leaders called the book racist, since
     police didn't keep similar photo files on blacks, Latinos or whites.

       Ted Nguyen, who is Vietnamese and a contractor in San Jose, has
     charged police there with violating his civil rights after he was
     stopped, photographed and later charged with a home invasion.
     Nguyen, who had no prior police record, spent 90 days in jail before
     being acquitted by a jury. His case is pending.

       In Boston last year, Asian Americans protested the photographing
     of suspected gang members in Chinatown. In a separate incident there
     this month, a state judge criticized the U.S. Immigration and
     Naturalization Service and a suburban police force for "trampling"
     the civil rights of four Asian refugees by staging their arrests as
     illegal aliens in order to secure their mug shots.

       "A lot of people think, 'It's OK, as long as they're getting the
     bad kids,' " said Andrew Leong, president of the Asian American
     Lawyers Association of Massachusetts. "But the problem is, you can't
     differentiate good kids and bad kids."

       When the bad kids strike, however, law enforcement officers say
     the results are horrific. Last year in Philadelphia, home-invading
     robbers held a 5-year-old boy under water until his mother told them
     where the family's money was hidden. In a 1987 home invasion,
     members of New York's Born to Kill gang, who were sweeping through
     Philadelphia, raped a man's wife and 11-year-old daughter,
     threatening them not to go to police.

       The refugee community is an easy target for home invasions.
     Families often prefer to keep their money at home, instead of banks.
     And having come from countries with totalitarian regimes, they are
     not inclined to trust authorities for help.

       The gang problem here began to escalate in 1989, prompting police
     to step up investigations of Asian organized crime - a task made
     more difficult by cultural barriers.

       "Let's face it. We're not trained in Asian culture," Kachigian
     said. "Translation is a problem. I don't have a single Asian officer
     here and it concerns me. It makes our job all that much more
     difficult."

       Philadelphia had 30 reported home invasions last year - 21 of
     which led to arrests or arrest warrants - but the actual number
     could have been much higher because of unreported cases, Kachigian
     said. This year, Philadelphia had only two cases, but the organized-
     crime unit saw an increase in reports of home invasions from
     suburban forces in Upper Darby, Abington and Norristown.

       Detectives were responding to two such invasions in Southwest
     Philadelphia when they went to McCreesh Playground one September
     night a year ago.

       A group of Vietnamese teens, including Trung Nguyen and Phuong Le,
     were finishing a volleyball game, when, they said, detectives
     approached them.

       The teens remember thinking the detectives seemed friendly. At
     first.

       "We want to get to know you," Nguyen recalled one of them saying
     to the volleyball players.

       Then, out came the camera.

       Le, 18, a senior at Bartram High School, says he asked, "Was there
     a problem?"

       He said the detective hadn't replied.

       "They didn't ask us, 'Can we take your picture?' They just said,
     'Stand over there,' " Le said.

       The detectives began taking pictures at the top of a stairway
     leading down into the crowded park. By the youths' account, police
     did not question the teens about the home invasions, nor did they
     ask about the highly publicized murder in the park a month earlier
     of a white high school student, David Reilly. They asked only for
     names and addresses.

       Nguyen, 17, also a Bartram senior and no relation to Jon
     Nguyen, said he had allowed his picture to be taken because "I had
     no choice."

       "I feel scared, afraid," Le said. "We weren't doing anything. We
     were just at the park."

       Kachigian said the teens had willingly allowed their photos to be
     taken and added that some had posed for the camera, "doing wheelies"
     on their bicycles. He said the McCreesh photos were destroyed. Le
     and Nguyen say they have not been told that directly.

       For Trung Nguyen, the McCreesh episode was not his last. In
     February, he was called out of chemistry class at Bartram - again,
     to be photographed. This time, he was sought by Detective Gamber of
     Upper Darby, who showed school officials a court order to take
     Nguyen's photograph.

       Nguyen refused, prompting Gamber to go to Nguyen's Southwest
     Philadelphia home the next day. Nguyen had to translate for his
     mother why the detective was there and what the court order said.

       Gamber said he was able to obtain the order from Delaware County
     Common Pleas Court because Nguyen was a suspect in a home-invasion
     investigation. The order echoed the language of the state's Juvenile
     Act. It stated that Nguyen's photograph would be used" for purposes
     of comparison," but if Nguyen was not identified as one of the
     attackers, it would be destroyed.

       Trung Nguyen was not arrested. Eight months after being stopped by
     police, his photograph remains in the Upper Darby mug book.

       And that, says Trung Nguyen, whose only other brush with police
     has been a curfew violation, scares him.

       "Sometime, someone could rob a house and maybe that person looks a
     little like me and (the victim) could point to the wrong person, to
     me," Nguyen said. "I want to take my picture back, that's all."

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