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AAPI community holds townhall in response to LAPD killing of Yong Yang
The Yang family questions the LAPD's tactics that lead up to the killing of Yong Yang while he was in a mental health crisis.
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Samanta Helou Hernandez
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LAist
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Topline:
The Asian American and Pacific Islander advisory board for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office held a town hall Thursday night in response to the May shooting of a 40-year-old man in Koreatown.
Yong Yang was experiencing a mental health crisis and armed with a knife when LA police fatally shot him in his parent’s home.
The discussion: Organizers called on the city and county to provide more ways of responding without guns to mental health crisis situations.
The panelists — some of them members of crisis teams — called for more de-escalation training for first responders and more patience from mental health workers and law enforcement who show up to such incidents.
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A question about the investigation: Esther Young Lim, chair of the district attorney’s AAPI Advisory Board and co-organizer of the event, asked when the community might see accountability for the shooting.
“Me speaking as a Korean American, I guess I personally am just wondering about... the timeline of the investigation,” Lim said. “My community is really not hearing anything from anybody... and during that time it’s just frustration.”
Tiffiny Blacknell, D.A. George Gascón’s chief of staff, said the office was still waiting for the LAPD’s investigation into the shooting to be turned over to prosecutors, which could take months.
Some context: A recent LAist investigation found that between 2017 and 2023, nearly one third of shootings by LAPD involved a person perceived by officers to be experiencing a mental health crisis.
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