Individuals who play key roles in New York’s police department or have done so in the past have major ties to China’s communist regime, and are using their positions to further policy favorable to Beijing.
Notably, James O’Neill, whom New York Mayor Bill de Blasio tapped as NYPD Commissioner from 2016 to 2019 and who now serves as de Blasio’ COVID-19 senior advisor, has repeatedly spoken at the America China Public Affairs Institute (ACPAI).
According to ACPAI’s website, the organization “strongly supports a Security Partnership between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China” on areas including “law enforcement cooperation,” “military consultation,” and “pandemic disease control.”
ACPAI also “strongly supports a Mutual Visa Waiver Program between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China,” as well as free trade agreements between the two countries.
While serving as police commissioner, O’Neill spoke at three of ACPAI’s “Law Enforcement Luncheons.”
As The National Pulse notes of ACPAI:
The group has also hosted a “private breakfast forum with Dr. Yao Yunzhu,” who is a retired Major General of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) along with a “Security Partnership Symposium” hosted by the PLA Academy of Military Science.
With the help of the aforementioned Chinese Communist Party apparatchiks, ACPAI seeks to “gather our expertise and our network of friends to facilitate a transformational United States-China relation,” according to its mission statement.
“For the twenty-first century, a cooperative partnership with the People’s Republic of China is important and necessary for the United States of America,” it continues.
Per the mayor’s office, in his role of COVID-19 advisor, assumed in April 2020, “O’Neill will oversee the supply and distribution of personal protective and medical equipment within New York City hospitals as demand continues to surge due to the COVID-19 crisis. O’Neill will create, operationalize and manage a supply inspection regime within the hospitals to ensure the rapid turnaround of new supplies and verify each hospital is pushing needed equipment to frontline health care workers.”
But ACPAI’s influence extends to the current NYPD administration as well.
One member of the police department’s recently launched hate crime review panel is Fred Teng, ACPAI’s president.
Teng, who was born in Shanghai, is associated with several Chinese communist entities. He is a senior representative of the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), an organization that cultivates American favor for Chinese policies by, in part, taking U.S. journalists, politicians, and other influential figures to China where they are wined and dined by high-ranking members officials of the CCP.
Teng is also the former CEO of China Newsweek, a regime-controlled propaganda magazine based in Beijing under the control of the State Council.
In a 2012 BBC article, Teng defended the spread of Chinese-controlled media in America. He also voiced support for Chinese president Xi Jinping’s removal of term limits, which allows him to stay in power for life. Teng asserted that the Chinese regime is “doing a critically good job right now” and that “In order to carry out the agenda and the reform, we need a continuous leadership.”
“Most of the people like it because he’s doing a good job,” Teng said of Xi, adding: ““I mean why change someone when they’re doing a good job?”
NYPD’s five-member hate crime review panel, which was inaugurated in April, has a mission of advising the New York Police Department (NYPD) on which crimes should be classified as hate crimes. The group will also advise the District Attorney’s office on the hate crime classification.
The danger of hate crimes is that they take actions that are already crimes, such as assault, murder or vandalism, and add additional criminality for an allegedly “racist” or “homophobic” motivation. Eventually, the mere act of holding “bigoted” views becomes a crime, and the Left has full control over what is to be deemed “bigoted.”
Thus, hate crimes inevitably become instruments of political persecution by which the Left can legally target those with dissenting opinions.
It’s not surprising that China, a communist regime with the stated aim of weakening America from within, is promoting social Marxism in U.S. law enforcement — a move that will make policing less effective while paving the way for police suppression of speech that goes against Beijing’s preferred narrative.
