WONG WAS WRONG, NOW SUING FOR BEING WRONGED

When 84-year-old Kang Chun Wong got stopped by a NY cop for jaywalking, he did not understand the cop’s orders and was knocked unconscious, ending up bloodied in a hospital

On January 21 I wrote on BarkGrowlBite that it was hard for me to fathom why a very old man who does not speak English ends up bloodied in the hospital because he could not understand an officer’s orders in a jaywalking violation and tried to walk away. Now Mr. Wong, who was wrong, is suing for being wronged.

The New York Daily News reports that Sanford Rubenstein, Wong’s attorney, will file a $5 million lawsuit against NYC, NYPD and the cops who participated in the arrest.

When he was 19, Kang Chun Wang, now 84, left his native China for Cuba where he found work as a farm laborer. In 1966 he arrived in NYC with only the clothes on his back. He slept on floors and worked as a dishwasher in restaurants. Eventually he managed to open his own Chinese-Spanish restaurant on Broadway which he operated until he retired. Wong is the father of three sons. He has lived in the same Upper West Side apartment for almost 50 years. Wong never learned to speak English, speaking only Cantonese and Spanish.

Wong had never been arrested until January 19, when he was arrested for jaywalking at the corner of 96th St. & Broadway while on the way to his apartment. Here is Wong’s account of what occurred:

Wong insists the traffic light was green when he started to cross the street. When he got to the other side of the street he was stopped by a cop who asked for his ID. Wong understood what the cop wanted and handed over his ID. But when the cop walked away, Wong repeatedly said in Cantonese, “Give me back my ID.” That’s when the cop whipped out his cuffs and spoke into his handy-talkie. The next thing Wong knew was that he was surrounded by cops who threw him against a wall and then threw him onto the sidewalk, knocking him unconscious. When he came to, his hands were cuffed behind his back and blood was streaming down his face.

Ian King, a Fordham University law student, witnessed the incident and described it this way: “[The officer] stood him up against the wall and was trying to write him a ticket. The man didn’t seem to understand, and he started walking away. The cop tried to pull him back, and that’s when he began to struggle with the cop. As soon as he pushed the cop, it was like cops started running in from everywhere.”

The police had been ordered to focus on jaywalking after several pedestrians had been killed in the area. At first Bill Bratton, New York’s newly appointed Police Commissioner, praised the cops for the way they handled Wong, but then backed off pending an Internal Affairs investigation. And Bill de Blasio, New York’s new Sandinista-loving mayor, released a statement through his office which said that because there have been too many traffic deaths, zero tolerance would be enforced against violators.

Wong was clearly wrong. I am sure he jaywalked against a red traffic light and then struggled with an apparently inpatient cop. But I have a real problem with the way a bunch of officers handled this 84-year-old non-English speaking man who had worked hard all his life and had never been arrested. Wong was not a dangerous young gangbanger.

Now I know that some of you patriots will say that Wong should have learned to speak English. But New York is a city of immigrants and many of them, especially the elderly, have lived and worked within a cluster of their fellow countrymen and thus have never found the need to speak English. You have Hispanics speaking only Spanish, Italians speaking only Italian, Chinese speaking only Chinese, Poles speaking only Polish, Russians speaking only Russian, etc. And while they may not be able to speak English, they are nevertheless loyal American citizens who deserve to be treated as such.