Helena Wong | Race Files

Author: Helena Wong

Executive Director of CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities (also known as Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence), a pan-Asian social justice organization based in New York City. Throughout the past two decades CAAAV has worked on the issue of police violence. Currently they are part of the city-wide campaign, Communities United for Police Reform (CPR).

Campaigns that put racism front and center are not popular these days. Just ask Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He recently claimed that the New York Police Department stops whites “too much” in reaction to two pieces of legislation aimed at putting an end to the NYPD’s practice of arbitrarily over-targeting blacks and Latinos. This tactic, better known as Stop and Frisk, has resulted in an estimated 5 million or so stops, 85 percent of them involving blacks and Latinos, over the last ten years. And the topper, only 12 percent of those stops resulted in arrests, mainly for minor offenses.