Chinese police officer fired after FBI spy investigation

This article was originally published by Documenteda nonprofit news organization that covers New York’s immigrant communities. Subscribe to them Newsletter.

A police officer from China has been fired from the New York Police Department after he became involved in a federal investigation into the alleged illegal activities of a Chinese agent. This is according to NYPD disciplinary records first published by Documented. Lieutenant Steven Li, who worked at the Internal Affairs Bureau, was kicked out on February 16.

Investigations by the FBI and NYPD found that between late 2019 and fall 2021, Li helped a Chinese national named Sun Hoi Ying contact an individual targeted by the Chinese government. According to court and NYPD documents, Sun was allegedly paid by the Chinese government to come to the United States to conduct “Operation Fox Hunt,” a program run by the Chinese Ministry of Public Security to repatriate suspected Chinese refugees, often bypassing authorities in the foreign countries where those people had settled.

After being introduced to Sun by an acquaintance, Li arranged meetings for Sun in New York with a person, unnamed in the documents, who was accused of embezzling money from a Chinese state-owned company before moving to the United States in 2001. According to the NYPD disciplinary document, Li made it clear to the victim, whom he knew from community events, that he was a police officer and did not represent Sun or the Chinese government. It would simply facilitate communication so that the two parties could resolve the dispute.

Li joins Baimadajie Angwang as the second Chinese-American police officer in the city to lose his job because of foreign agent-related cases since 2008, the earliest date the NYPD’s public disciplinary records are available. Both men were found not guilty of any criminal activity. Her punishment by New York police sent goosebumps through the Chinese community, already under increasing scrutiny due to strained U.S.-China relations.

Sun was charged in 2022 with working as a foreign agent for China without notifying the U.S. attorney general in advance, as the law requires and broadly continues to require. Li, identified in court documents only as Co-Conspirator 2 and not by his name, was not charged in the federal case. Li’s identification in the trial was documented by Sun’s name, which is spelled out in both documents.

According to the NYPD document, the agency’s internal investigation concluded that Li was not guilty of the “foreign agent” charge that the agency’s Department Advocate’s Office had brought against him. There was no evidence that Li knew Sun was working for the Chinese government at the time of the meetings, nor was he found to have accepted money from China or threatened the victim. The internal investigation found that he had told the FBI that he did not know the purpose of the two parties’ first meeting, which he helped arrange, only to change the account during the same interview when he realized that the FBI may already have known the facts. It also found that Li had failed to follow internal policy by failing to report the FBI’s investigation of him to the NYPD.

Li, who had served the NYPD for 20 years until January and had no disciplinary infractions and an outstanding performance award, was fired for making false statements and failing to report.

Li and his lawyer did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Li was fired less than a month after Angwang, a Tibetan police officer from China who was charged by the federal government with promoting China’s interests. Although prosecutors dropped all charges against him, the NYPD continued its internal investigation into Angwang. He was fired for failing to appear for an internal interview, which his lawyers said was “unlawful” because the NYPD refused to share evidence with them in advance.

“I see a lot of similarities between his case and mine. When they want to incriminate you, they always find excuses,” Angwang said. “I wonder if we would be treated like this even if we weren’t from China?”

Across the country, Chinese immigrants have already faced increased scrutiny amid deteriorating U.S.-China relations. The China Initiative, a program the Department of Justice (DOJ) launched in late 2018 to combat economic espionage activities from China, was condemned by academics and civil rights activists for racial bias because it previously targeted Chinese-American scholars and scientists in 2022 reduced.

Since 2023, 17 states have passed new laws to ban Chinese citizens from purchasing real estate.

In Florida, Chinese citizens are not only banned from buying homes, but also from working in university laboratories. At least one more police officer is under investigation in the New York Police Department after he sparked controversy online for posting videos supporting a China-Russia alliance and displaying his admiration for the Chinese national anthem in uniform during a Chinese New Year parade had expressed.

Angwang is not the first to question whether the NYPD’s disciplinary criteria are biased. A 2022 New York Post report found that at least 16 police officers arrested between 2017 and 2021 kept their jobs after a department trial judge found them guilty. Some of them had received charges that by law should have resulted in automatic dismissal.

Even after the NYPD reformed its disciplinary system in 2021 to make it fairer and more transparent, the department still had cases that caused a stir. Last year, a police officer pleaded guilty to having a sexual relationship with a witness, was found guilty of threatening the witness and was recommended for dismissal by an internal judge. But Police Commissioner Edward Caban, who makes the final decision on such issues, still allowed the officer to keep his job.

Hugh Mo, a lawyer who worked as the NYPD’s first Asian deputy trial commissioner in the 1980s, brushed off questions about the fairness of the sentencing decisions handed down to Li. He said despite the “political undertones” of the case, lying to the FBI was a violation serious enough to warrant firing. Others have a different opinion. “This is a typical political case. If they can’t destroy you in court, they use internal tools,” said a retired Chinese-American detective who asked to remain anonymous because he still works for the city. “This is the return of the McCarthy era.”

Li and Angwang are the only NYPD cops whose careers were upended by federal investigations into illegal foreign agents working for China, as far as NYPD public documents go. But that may just be a start. In recent years, the Justice Department has increasingly relied on two laws passed in the early 20th century that require prior registration of those who promote the interests of other countries in order to counteract the influence of opponents.

At least 36 people have been charged with foreign agent violations benefiting China since 2020, more than in any other country, while the number stood at five between 2009 and 2020, according to DOJ announcements, an incomplete archive of federal court cases.

This means that for Chinese-born police officers who frequently attend community events, the risk of being inadvertently drawn into a conspiracy involving China and accused of acting as a foreign agent is higher than ever. Michael Moy, a former NYPD detective, recommends that Chinese-born police officers not speak to anyone they don’t know at community banquets and not to give advice to any party in a dispute until the case is formally reported to the police.

Having to live with such danger is unfair to Chinese-American police officers, but it does not impose a unique burden, said Moy, who retired in 2019 after filing a lawsuit against the city that owns the district where he worked was accused of tolerating racism against minority police officers. “In 2001, Muslim police officers had to be careful about who they dealt with,” he said, referring to the post-9/11 atmosphere.

The NYPD and the agency’s Asian Jade Society, which represents Asian police officers, did not respond to Documented’s inquiries by press time.

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