Ever since the beginning of Peter Liang‘s trial, the Police Benevolence Association has been an obvious absentee in a case of police misconduct where there always make their presence publicly known.

The PBA’s lack of support has created a perception among Liang’s supporters that the city’s largest police union would not be treating a white police officer accused of the same crimes in this manner. PBA attorneys instructed Liang not tot testify about the fateful night that he took Akai Gurley‘s life in the staircase of his own building in East New York, Brooklyn, but his partner, who is white, was granted immunity by testifying. Liang dismissed his police union-appointed lawyers after he and his family claim that they were not phone calls and generally treating his case as they would that of a white officer.

“A lot of people are asking me why a Chinese officer is getting put on trial when all the other police killings never went to trial. Why everybody else is innocent and only the Chinese man goes to court?”, asked Liang in a letter to to Eddie Chiu, the president of the Lin Sing Association, which advocates on behalf of the Chinese community in New York City, to help her son pay for better legal support.