The 911 calls came in just after 1 a.m. A man requested an ambulance for his sister, who had bipolar disorder and was experiencing a mental health emergency at her apartment in Fort Lee, N.J. It was not the first time.
In the past, emergency responders had carefully de-escalated the situation before taking the woman, Victoria G. Lee, to a hospital for treatment. But on the morning of July 28, less than an hour after her brother called 911 twice and told the operator that his sister was in crisis and holding a “foldable” knife, Ms. Lee was killed.
When police officers arrived, Ms. Lee, 25, refused to let them into her apartment and threatened to stab one of them. An officer then rammed through the locked front door, according to body camera footage released by the New Jersey attorney general’s office. As officers yelled “drop the knife,” Ms. Lee moved forward and the officer fired his gun.
“I can’t breathe,” gasped Ms. Lee, who lay bleeding on the ground as officers shouted.
The shooting seemed, in some ways, to resemble other police killings of people having mental health crises that have drawn scrutiny in New Jersey and across the country.
But in other ways, it was unusual: Asian American women like Ms. Lee, who was Korean American, are rarely killed by officers. And police officers in Fort Lee seldom use lethal force. While the office of the borough clerk and the Fort Lee Police Department both declined to provide information on police killings, data collected by Mapping Police Violence, a nonprofit group, shows that Ms. Lee was only the second person fatally shot by officers in Fort Lee since 2013.
Grief-stricken after the shooting, which is being investigated by the state attorney general’s office, Ms. Lee’s father has said that he wants the officer who fired the fatal shot, Tony Pickens Jr., to be criminally prosecuted.
And other Asian American residents of Fort Lee, where more than 42 percent of the population is Asian, say Ms. Lee’s killing has shattered their sense of security and damaged their trust in the local police.
For 30 years, Sylvia Kim considered Fort Lee a welcoming place to raise her family. She felt safe in the close-knit community, where it often seemed like everyone had mutual friends or attended the same church.
But not anymore. “They’re so scared,” Ms. Kim, 51, said of members of her social circle. “Policemen have to really stand for the community and people. If we cannot really feel comfortable calling them asking for help, what’s the point?”
The killing appears to have deepened distrust of the police among members of a demographic that has historically been somewhat skeptical of law enforcement. And it has raised related concerns that a community in which mental health issues are often stigmatized might have further reasons not to seek help.
Many Asian Americans — particularly immigrants and those who don’t speak fluent English — have developed deep distrust of police officers after years of feeling dismissed and misunderstood by them, said Kathleen C. Kim, a professor at Loyola Law School and a former member of the Los Angeles Police Department’s board of commissioners.
“I do think that in the culture of policing, structural racism exists, and I think that is reflected from a history of neglect of minority communities,” she said.
In a letter sent to the Fort Lee police chief, mayor and borough council, several Asian American community leaders said many residents were now afraid to call 911.
“We are deeply concerned by the impact of this tragic event on Fort Lee residents’ trust, well-being and fundamental sense of safety,” the letter said.
In addition to demanding improved communication and transparency, the letter asked officials for an explanation of the Police Department’s “medical assistance protocol,” and to confirm that Officer Pickens had been put on leave or on administrative duty.
The department’s policy for addressing an “emotionally disturbed person” instructs officers to use force when the person exhibits dangerous behavior. But it also directs them to treat the individual with “dignity” and deploy de-escalation tactics, such as showing kindness, avoiding making threats and ignoring verbal abuse.
Neither the town’s administration nor the Police Department had responded to the letter as of Wednesday afternoon. Police records show that Officer Pickens was put on desk duty on July 31. The Police Department declined to provide more information about his disciplinary history.
It remains unclear whether Officer Pickens will face charges in the shooting. Christopher Herrmann, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, said that he had watched the body camera footage and believed the shooting had been in self-defense.
“If someone is within 10 feet of you, they have a knife and they are threatening you, that is more than enough reason to use lethal force,” he said.
But Frank Edwards, an associate criminal justice professor at Rutgers University’s Newark campus, said the officers did not appear to do enough in the minutes leading up to the shooting to de-escalate the situation.
He said he could not imagine “any universe where the way the police responded to that call could be considered appropriate.”
Before the officers broke down the door, he said, they seemed focused on determining at what point they would be justified in using lethal force.
“The point wasn’t to interact with her and her family like humans,” he said.
Asian Americans — particularly Asian American women — are among the least likely people to be killed by the police in the United States, Dr. Edwards said.
About 2 percent of the 4,458 people killed by the police between 2013 and 2019 were Asian, according to an analysis by Rajiv Sethi, a professor at Barnard College who uses data from Mapping Police Violence and the census to analyze police killings.
About 41 percent of those killed were white, 33 percent were Black and 22 percent were Hispanic, according to Dr. Sethi’s analysis. Though a full breakdown by race and gender was not available, far more men than women are killed by the police.
Notably, Dr. Sethi said, the share of Asian American fatalities was lower than the group’s share of the population, while the shares of Black and Hispanic fatalities were higher than their shares of the population.
But people with mental illness encounter police violence at very high rates, Dr. Edwards said, making Ms. Lee’s case “a lot less remarkable than it should be.”
The New Jersey attorney general’s office recently revised its statewide use-of-force policy, which advises the police to consider calling in community crisis response teams or mental health providers when confronted with a “barricaded individual” and to avoid trying to force a resolution if there is no immediate threat.
The policy — applying to every sworn officer in the state — also requires law enforcement agencies to conduct quarterly training drills with mental health professionals.
The changes were made in an effort to facilitate “peaceful resolutions to encounters between police and barricaded individuals,” Matthew J. Platkin, the attorney general, said in a statement. Some changes will be in effect as soon as October.
K.Y. Lee, Ms. Lee’s father, said in an interview that the changes might help others, but that his family did not believe they amounted to justice.
“Even if it is negligence, it is almost no different from intended murder,” he said of the Fort Lee officers’ actions. “The consequences were death, irreversible.”
Ms. Lee worked in a music studio and was a talented cello player who loved learning new languages and listening to Amy Winehouse, her father said.
In many Asian cultures, it is considered “shameful” to seek help coping with mental health struggles, said Amber Reed, the co-executive director of AAPI New Jersey, an advocacy group for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
“They think that safety comes from keeping your head down, not drawing attention,” Ms. Reed said.
Between 2015 and 2019, Asian adults were the least likely to use mental health resources, according to a study by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Dr. Anthony Tobia, the chair of the psychiatry department at Rutgers University’s Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, advised anyone trying to help someone experiencing a mental health emergency to call a regional screening center. These organizations usually operate 24-hour hotlines and work with local governments to provide emergency inpatient assessments, he said.
“It’s never a good idea, when there’s a level of imminent risk, to try to handle that yourself,” he said.
The Black Lives Matter chapter in Paterson, N.J., 15 miles west of Fort Lee, has long pushed for institutional changes to how the police respond to mental illness, especially after officers killed several Black people in the area who were experiencing mental health emergencies.
The group has vocally supported Ms. Lee’s family and the local Korean American community, said Zellie Thomas, a lead organizer.
“Black people aren’t the only victims of police violence,” he said, adding that his organization urges change “not just for the safety of Black people, but for the safety of everyone.”
At a rally last month in Ms. Lee’s memory, Rei Ukon stifled sobs as he said she had been his best friend. They had met as students at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa.
“How could they do this to her?” Mr. Ukon, 25, said.
Mr. Ukon said his friend enjoyed karaoke, playing guitar, cooking for her friends and watching anime. She also loved her corgi, Beau, who is visible in the body camera footage just before the shooting.
Ms. Lee “was just a normal person,” Mr. Ukon said. “She had such big dreams.”
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