Event photos by Gabriel Bit-Babik '25
Utica, NY – On the 28th of June, officers from the Utica Police Department fatally shot Nyah Mway, a thirteen-year old Karen boy. The shooting drew national media attention, and sparked discussions about police brutality and refugee rights. One month since the shooting, there has been a march calling for action from the City, the Utica Police Department, and local media outlets. Several local politicians and community members have commented on the shooting, and both the Utica Police Department and the Office of the Attorney General have released additional information.
A GoFundMe page set up for the family has reached over $56,000. The Justice for Nyah Mway organization created a website to provide information and updates.
March for Nyah Mway:
Over three hundred people marched from Roscoe Conkling Park to Mohawk Valley Community College on Saturday, July 13th to stand against the shooting. The demonstrators, predominantly Karen, called for action from the Utica Police Department, the City of Utica, the Common Council, and the media.
Marchers began on the sidewalk as they exited Roscoe Conkling Park onto Oneida Street before turning onto Memorial Parkway. Police cruisers followed from behind as the large crowd moved into the parkway for most of the rest of the march, flanked by legal observers watching the police and marshals holding yellow rope to keep the crowd orderly.
During the March, both Karen organizers and community leaders led chants, including “No hate, no fear, refugees are welcome here” and “Whose streets? Our streets.” Demonstrators chanted Nyah Mway’s name, declaring their support for the Utica community and denouncing police racism.
Demands of the March:
The demands outlined below have been quoted verbatim from the Justice for Nyah website . They were also presented by the organizers at the demonstration
“That the mayor's office and the UPD offer an official apology and admission of wrongdoing for the murder of Nyah Mway.
That the city cover funeral costs, as well as mental health expenses for the family as they deal with the devastating loss of their child.
That the UPD investigation - its process, stages, timeline and findings - remain transparent and fair. The family and community demand weekly updates in English, Burmese and Karen, written and verbalized publicly.
That irrespective of the findings of the investigation, the officers involved are fired from the UPD. The findings of an investigation cannot change the fact that these officers have lost the public trust. While it is important that the UPD has its only internal mechanism of investigation, the community cannot and will not trust the findings of any investigation
that the UPD conducts regarding its own conduct. While we welcome the New York State Attorney General’s independent investigation, we demand a community controlled process in which the community is directly involved in holding the UPD accountable when it oversteps its bounds.
That the city invests in community institutions, like the Midtown Utica Community Center, the Mohawk Valley Latino Association, the Junior Frontiers of Mohawk Valley, Utica Royalties and many others that serve public safety by providing recreation and resources to young people like Nyah Mway.
That the city establishes an independent civilian review board, staffed not by politicians and law enforcement, but by a representative sample of community stakeholders who have investigatory and discriminatory power. While it is important that the UPD has its only internal mechanism of investigation, the community cannot and will not trust the findings of any investigation that the UPD conducts regarding its own conduct. While we welcome the New York State Attorney General’s independent investigation, we demand a community controlled process in which the community is directly involved in holding the UPD accountable when it oversteps its bounds
That the UPD articulates a clear and feasible plan to change the demographics of the police department. Most of its officers not only do not reflect the racial and ethnic diversity of the community, they are in fact not from the community. Instead, this largely white police force brings their biased views of our Utica from the surrounding suburbs to racially profile our communities, kill our children and take the income that they receive from our tax dollars back to the suburbs from which they come. We demand that this process of exploitation be ended.
One step toward this is the reinstitution by the Utica Common Council of the residency requirement, and a more rigorous process of screening out applicants who use relatives’, friends’, or secondary addresses to bypass living in Utica.
We demand that the Common Council pass legislation that requires the UPD to report all stops, where they happen, the demographics of the person stopped and the reason for the stop. This level of data recording will aid in transparency into the UPD's interaction with the public. (For reference, see https://www.changethenypd.org/HowManyStopsAct )
That the Utica School District end its partnership with the UPD and remove “school resource officers” from our school district. Our schools should be places of learning and safety, not of criminalization and police surveillance.
That our local media -- namely WKTV and the Utica Observer Dispatch -- uphold the journalistic purpose of helping ordinary citizens hold authorities accountable by reporting objectively and not with unquestioned deference to people in power. Local media has a shameless record of engaging in what some have described as “copaganda,” attempting to paint an overly favorable view of law enforcement by reporting what they say as “fact.” As journalistic outlets, we demand that they uphold their crucial democratic function of empowering readers with unbiased and critical coverage of authorities, rather than act as their advertising agency."
That the Mayor’s office redirects the state and federal funding it receives to reduce gun violence from the Utica Police Department — which continues to fail in that endeavor — to the establishment of a robust community violence interruption program that operates alongside SNUG.”
Marchers Speak:
In her opening address to the rally, Kay Klo, director of the Midtown Utica Community Center (MUCC) and local Karen organizer, said: “In a youth meeting recently, every single one of our boys described stories of being racially profiled simply for walking outside in their own neighborhood. Our community is under-resourced and over-policed.”
“We are asking you to critically think about what…safety truly means -
and what that looks like. Do we actually need more policing and surveillance, or do we need a robust investment in our schools and public services?” Klo said. “Justice is love in action.” she continued “And it is precisely our commitment to putting love in action in pursuit of justice that forces us today to hold the mayor and UPD accountable.”
According to Police Scorecard, an organization that tracks policing statistics, between 2013 and 2021, the Utica Police Department had more officers per city population than 95% of police departments across New York State. The UPD also used more force per arrest than 62% of departments.
LuPway Doh, the chairperson of the Utica Karen Community, a local non-profit organization, gave Monitor an account of Karen youth’s experiences with local law enforcement, including incidents that had occurred prior to Nyah Mway’s death. “We have been harassed for years, since we came” — Karen people began arriving in Utica between the late 1900s and the early 2000s – “the youth have been stopped, often with no cause to be stopped,” he said. “They end up having their car searched, and when [the police] do not find anything, they give [the youth] a nonsense ticket [saying] ‘you did not have your signal light on for long enough when you turned’. If you hang something on your rearview mirror, they consider that blocking your view…Those things happen very often…we hear [about] it on almost a weekly basis.”
Local Karen organizer Yadana Oo agreed. “I’ve seen the good in Utica, but I’ve also seen the bad,” she told the crowd in a speech. “I’ve been racially profiled, I’ve been called out of my name.”
She continued: “We are here to exercise our rights as American citizens. We are here to demand the justice and fairness that was promised to us by the American constitutions. To all of you that are choosing to ignore this, that are choosing to turn a blind eye, just remember that silence is compliance.”
Pastor Mike Ballman of the Cornerstone Community Church addressed the gathering, highlighting the necessity for more white people (like himself) to “dismantle all the structures of income inequality and the lack of representation for people of color and for refugees.”
While Monitor could not locate an official statistic for the number of refugees within the city, various sources have estimated that approximately 20% of the city’s population is made up of refugees and their children. However, there is not a single elected representative from a refugee community. Of the dozens of officials representing Utica at a city and county level, only a small handful come from racial or ethnic minorities.
Bringing a personal perspective to a highly politicized tragedy, one speaker said: [Nyah Mway] could have been my child.”
Damaris, who wished to be identified by their first name only, was a member of Troy 4 Black Lives at the march. Damaris called for instant divestment from police departments, saying: “We need to be making sure that there are people… who are actually from the community, who are working to resolve conflict in the community. [People that are] trained in de-escalation, trained in mental health, trained in substance abuse disorder treatment, trained in all the things that can actually help transform conflict and harm in a community, and not just escalate it into murder and trauma.”
Immediate Aftermath of the March:
At the end of the march, Nyah Mway’s family invited the crowd to their home for a community meal with traditional Karen food.
At the following day’s Boilermaker Road Race, a small group distributed signs featuring Nyah Mway and cheered for the runners. Some runners also wore apparel with the movement's logo.
Responses from Representatives:
Monitor surveyed the Utica Common Council, members of the Oneida County Legislature who represent Utica, the Oneida County Executive, and Utica’s representatives in the NYS Assembly and Senate. Only 22% of the contacted politicians completed the survey, which sought to explore their positions on the city’s response to the tragedy, changes at policy levels and relationships with refugee communities, among others. The survey results and responses can be found here.
Councilmember Robert Burmaster (D, 2nd Ward) and County Legislator Lori Washburn (D, 21st District) – whose districts were where the shooting happened – did not respond to the survey. Monitor was unable to identify comments from either in other media outlets or online.
Speaking to Monitor after a recent Common Council meeting, Council President Rocco Giruzzi (R) said “It's terrible, you know. I'm a parent, it's the worst thing that can happen to any parent, to lose a child, especially one so young who'd just graduated from Donovan Middle School. I'd been a teacher there for over twenty nine years, it's a horrible tragedy.”
When asked about how he included Karen people in the decision-making process at a policy level, he pointed out that, in addition to opportunities existing to run for elected offices, Common Council meetings were open to public comment.
An already-scheduled special council meeting three days after the shooting – at which hundreds of demonstrators and Karen community members gathered – was closed to public comment. When questioned about this, Giruzzi said “it was a special council meeting… to go over a piece of legislation.” He explained: “We’ve had many [special council meetings], it’s no public comment period. I didn’t make the rule, that’s just the way it’s always been.”
When asked about policy changes, Giruzzi said “I’m not a police officer, so I don’t know the job that they have.” He added, “[We have] to do a better job of educating the youth to understand, to respect authority, to make sure that they’re doing the right thing so when [they] get in a situation like that it doesn’t escalate. I think everybody, from the police department to parents, to teachers, to schools, we all have to work together to respect one another and authority.”
Releases from Police Department and Attorney General:
On July 25th, the Utica Police department released a “Critical Incident Brief,” in the form of a video on its Facebook and YouTube accounts. The video contains footage of two armed robberies which took place prior to the incident. It also contains a verbal narrative provided by the police department, which states that the victims of both robberies reported the perpetrators being an Asian male and an accomplice, with the second victim describing the accomplice as being on a bicycle.
The inclusion of this footage was criticized by Justice for Nyah, which posted a press release on its website. The organization stated that “the footage [was] a callous and shameless attempt by the police to distract the public from the unjustified killing of a thirteen-year-old child… A real and unbiased investigation should be focused on why Officer Husnay walked over to Nyah Mway while he was pinned on the ground by Officer Patterson, and shot him at close range in the chest.”
Previously, Patrick Husnay’s body cam footage (as released by the UPD) began with a fade from black. Newly released footage within the Critical Incident video shows him arriving at the location of the stop, and includes audio of his mentioning "Asian males" and “suspects.”
Within the video, the police department alleged that Nyah Mway had pointed the gun at the officers after he had been tackled to the ground by Bryce Patterson. In the video released by the UPD, the gun is briefly shown to be in Nyah Mway’s hand as he is pinned to the ground by Patterson (this moment was paused and highlighted within the video by the UPD).
Seconds later, Husnay shoots him in the chest. The unblurred body cam footage released by the Attorney General’s Office shows the gun lying at a point away from Nyah Mway before it was retrieved by the officers.
As the Daily Sentinel has reported, lawyers Julia P. Kuan and Earl S. Ward from the law firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel - who represent Nyah Mway’s family - stated, “there is evidence that the BB gun was not in Nyah’s hand and not close to his body when Officer Husnay fired his weapon. There is no denying that what happened here was unlawful.” The firm has handled cases of officer-involved shootings in the past, most notably that of Tamir Rice.
Next Steps:
The Attorney General’s Office will continue its criminal investigation into the actions of the officers, while the Utica Police Department will conduct its own investigation into whether the shooting violated department policy.
With July 28th marking the one-month anniversary of the shooting, community advocates are expected to continue organizing in the coming weeks and months.
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