NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton is not yet ready to apologize to Kang Wong, the 84-year-old Chinese man left beat up yesterday after a run-in with police for jaywalking. “I’m not aware of excessive force in that at all,” said Bratton today, according to the New York Post, whose cover photo of Wong says otherwise. “It was an unfortunate circumstance,” he added.
Police were allegedly ticketing jaywalkers around 96th Street and Broadway this weekend after a 26-year-old woman was killed crossing the street, the third such death in the area so far this year — as if pedestrians are the problem. Mayor De Blasio’s promise to prevent the glut of traffic deaths in the city better rely more heavily on better ideas.
“There is no larger policy in terms of jaywalking and ticketing,” said the mayor today. “That’s not part of our plan. But it is something a local precinct commander can act on, if they perceive there to be a real danger.”
As for Wong, his son says the elderly man doesn’t speak English and likely didn’t realize why he was being detained. When he walked away from an officer, “The cop tried to pull him back, and that’s when he began to struggle with the cop,” a witness told the Post. Asked if they plan to sue, Wong’s son said, “We’re strategizing now.” The De Blasio administration is hopefully doing the same.
