He came to the United States at 17 on a cultural exchange visa and later applied for, and was granted, political asylum, court filings show. He joined the Marines in 2009, spent seven months in Afghanistan, became a U.S. citizen in 2010, was honorably discharged in 2014 and then enlisted in the Army reserves, court records show.
In 2016, Officer Angwang joined the Police Department, where he was a patrol officer and, at the time of his arrest in September 2020, a community affairs officer with the 111th Precinct in Queens.
Prosecutors cited recorded phone calls in charging Officer Angwang and said he had reported regularly to two Chinese consular officials in New York on the activities of ethnic Tibetans. One of the officials was responsible for “neutralizing sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority” opposed to the Chinese government’s policies and authority, court filings said.
But Mr. Carman, Officer Angwang’s lawyer, argued that the conversations described by prosecutors as “nefarious” were actually “pedestrian” efforts by his client to maintain good relations with Chinese officials so that he could obtain a visa to visit his parents in China and to introduce them to his daughter.
“It is in this light that the court should assess Mr. Angwang’s solicitous tone and accommodating posture,” in his communications with one of the consular officials, Mr. Carman writes in one filling.
On Monday, Ashwin Verghese, a spokesman for International Campaign for Tibet, an advocacy group, said the lack of “clear details” about why prosecutors had moved to dismiss the case did not “negate the fact that” Officer Angwang had engaged in “close interaction with Chinese diplomats in New York, unusual for a Tibetan who has sought asylum in the United States.”
Officer Angwang was suspended without pay by the Police Department and discharged from the Army Reserve after he was charged. He was restored to the police payroll but remained suspended after being freed on bail in 2021, Mr. Carman said.
