How Washington Sees Things: The U.S. Police Handling of Racial Discrimination

Twelve years ago (1999), Joyce Chiang, an ethnic Chinese Washington, D.C. area lawyer, suddenly disappeared. The next day, January 9, someone in Anacostia Park discovered her green leather jacket and her government worker ID (Chiang was a U.S. immigration attorney). When I saw this news, my intuition told me told me the odds were stacked against her; in all likelihood she had already been murdered because the black crime rate in the park area is very high. Usually we wouldn’t even dare go there during the day, let alone at night (after Chiang had met up with some friends on the night of January 8, she stopped at a nearby Starbucks to buy a drink, then went missing).

Sure enough, in April Chiang’s body was found in the Potomac River; because it had been so long the body was already decomposed beyond recognition. DNA tests were used to verify the remains were Chiang’s, but the autopsy results were inconclusive regarding the cause of death. The police investigated the case for two years but couldn’t find any clues to crack the case. Then, unexpectedly, in 2001, it was announced that Chiang had committed suicide because of problems in the relationship with her boyfriend. Family members and friends were still unable to accept this, but the police had already closed the case. Family members were driven to despair; however, her brother Robert, who was living there, continued to persevere in his sister’s case, hoping to get to the bottom one day.

In May 2001, the disappearance of the Jewish woman Chandra Levy happened in Washington, D.C., causing Washington and even the U.S. media to pay attention. Levy’s and Chiang’s case both have many similarities; they both lived very near to each other, in the Dupont Circle area; both were congressional office interns and later worked for the federal government. Therefore, investigators started to investigate all aspects of the Levy case. This brought to mind Chiang’s case, making this cold case hot again.

It wasn’t until a year after she went missing that Levy’s remains were found; then after seven years, in 2009, the case was finally solved. The murderer was an illegal immigrant from El Salvador and was sentenced to six years in prison last November. The above-mentioned case resurrected Chiang’s long-closed case. In Washington, D.C. on the 13th of this month, Police Chief Lanier (female) announced that Chiang’s death was not the result of a suicide, but instead murder. Oddly enough, she mentioned Chiang was murdered, but made no mention of any suspects and hastily refused to answer any reporters questions while quickly ending the press conference.

According to what was leaked by Chiang’s brother and what the detectives and investigators assigned to the case said, there were two suspects. One is already serving a prison sentence while the other was sent back to Guyana in South America after serving a prison sentence. However, the United States has no extradition treaty with Guyana, so it is not possible to ask Guyana to send the suspect back — plus the evidence isn’t sufficient enough to prosecute suspects in a closed case. This amounts to Chiang’s life having been taken in vain. This made two former friends from Smith College break out in tears during the press conference. They emotionally said, “We are already married and have careers and families, but Joyce has none of this.” The police changed their statement from suicide to murder. Although it gave them a little relief, it doesn’t bring back their friend, so they are very grieved. Chiang was very active in college, was well liked and served as the president of the student body. Her parents emigrated from Taiwan.

If it weren’t for the enormous influence generated by the Chandra Levy case, we might not have known what happened to her after all these years of injustice. Now she finally has a bit of innocence, but the distance in bringing the perpetrators to justice and passing a sentence for the crime still seems too elusive.

It seems that disregard for human life is not unique to one place, but it cannot avoid the democracy and the rule of law of the United States. Seeing the attention of the American police on the Chandra Levy case and their rashness on the Chiang case, won’t people inevitably consider that race may be involved? Also, from the tremendous amount of meticulous coverage the media placed on Levy’s case, it can be seen that Jews in American society hold a high status and strong influence; in this regard, the Chinese pale.