American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting – May 20, 2025
Speaker: Min Yang, father of Yong Yang
Good afternoon.
My name is Min Yang, and I am the father of Yong Yang, who was shot and killed by LAPD officers on May 2, 2024.
Thank you for giving me this moment—this space—to speak not only as a grieving father, but as someone who still believes in the power of psychiatry to help prevent tragedies like my son’s death.
Yong was 40 years old.
He lived with mental illness—bouts of psychosis, delusions, and fear—but he was also a gentle, soulful, and funny young man.
He raised cats. He tended to his plants with quiet care. He created music—playing piano, cello, French horn, guitar, bass, keyboard. He sang. He produced. He wrote. He prayed. He meditated. He did yoga.
He felt everything deeply. And yes, he suffered deeply, too.
On the morning of May 2, Yong was in the middle of a mild psychotic episode inside our apartment in Koreatown.
My wife and I, after years of experience as caregivers, recognized the early signs.
He wasn’t violent. He wasn’t dangerous. But he was lost in his thoughts and needed help.
We wanted to intervene early—so we called the Department of Mental Health crisis line, asking for support before his condition worsened.
But instead of help, a clinician called 911—something we only learned later, from LAPD’s “critical incident video.”
And instead of a mental health team, armed police officers showed up.
They spoke to him through the locked front door—first for 35 seconds, then for 45 seconds.
Less than 90 seconds in total.
Then they forced open the door.
Within 8 seconds, my son was dead.
He never lunged. He never attacked.
He had a small kitchen knife in his hand.
But the officers were outside the apartment when they fired.
Yong didn’t need to be shot.
They didn’t need to open that door.
They didn’t need to be there at all.
He hadn’t committed a crime.
He was inside a home where he had been invited.
The officers knew that if he refused care, they couldn’t take him to the hospital.
And yet—they escalated, entered, and shot.
This was a failure of individuals, and a failure of systems.
Let me be clear about those failures:
- There was no mental health professional on scene.
- The officers had no meaningful de-escalation training.
- The Department of Mental Health had no real-time coordination with law enforcement.
- After Yong’s death, LAPD investigated itself. No transparency. No accountability. Just a cold bureaucratic process to explain away my son’s death.
Two months later, Victoria Lee, another Korean American in psychiatric crisis, was killed in New Jersey under eerily similar circumstances.
This isn’t coincidence.
This is a pattern.
Each year, police in the U.S. kill about 1,000 civilians.
Roughly 30–40% of them are experiencing mental health crises.
That’s the largest single category of police killings in this country.
If you compare the U.S. to other OECD nations, the rate of civilian killings—especially of mentally ill individuals—is the highest in the world.
And we are also number one in not prosecuting officers who shoot civilians.
Too many civilians are killed.
Too few officers are held accountable.
That is the formula of impunity.
And that should deeply concern you—as mental health professionals.
If any other professional field saw this level of systemic harm to its most vulnerable population—they would revolt.
Look at the civil rights movements—Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ advocacy, immigrant rights, women’s rights—people organize when they are harmed.
But who speaks for mental health patients?
If psychiatric patients are being killed at a higher rate—we must act.
If they’re being killed at the same rate—we must still act.
Silence is not neutrality. It is complicity.
I’m not here today to suggest minor reforms.
We’ve heard those for years.
Training. Funding. More policies.
But people are still dying. My son is dead.
When tragedies become routine, you know that “business as usual” is no longer acceptable.
So here is my call to you—psychiatrists, mental health professionals, institutions:
- Demand co-responder models—mental health teams must respond alongside or instead of police. Not in pilot programs or reports—but in every community, every city.
- Train law enforcement in psychiatric crisis response and trauma-informed care.
If a psychiatrist wouldn’t diagnose in ten seconds, why should a police officer be allowed to shoot in ten seconds? - Push for independent reviews of police killings involving mental illness. Psychiatry cannot stay silent about patients who never made it to your care.
- Break the silence in immigrant communities.
Many of us fear stigma. Many fear the system.
But if psychiatrists speak up—in Korean, Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog—people will listen.
Use your voice. - And finally: Make police stop killing.
Help shift their role—from warriors to guardians, from enforcers to protectors.
I say this not as an outsider.
I am a scientist. I have a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Southern California, earned in 1991.
I was a conservative man. I trusted institutions. I respected authority. I never questioned the system.
But then—my son was shot to death in my own home, after I called for help from my own government, by my own city’s police department.
And everything changed.
My wife, Yong’s twin brother, and I are shattered.
I wake up crying in the middle of the night.
We still do not understand why we must go on living.
But even our grief is nothing compared to Yong’s suffering, and his senseless death.
I refuse to let his death be meaningless.
Yong was not a threat.
He was a patient.
He needed care—not bullets.
So next time you hear, “He had a knife”, ask yourself:
What kind of system makes it easier to pull a trigger than to wait for care?
As psychiatrists, you must be part of the answer.
Not after someone dies—but before the sirens ever arrive.
I know that psychiatrists are among the most intelligent professionals, and that your work is incredibly complex, demanding, and emotionally challenging. Choosing to dedicate your life to this field requires exceptional strength, compassion, and commitment. For that alone, I hold the deepest respect for each of you.
And as a family member of someone who lived with mental illness, I am truly and profoundly grateful—for the care you give, the burdens you carry, and the lives you try to save. That gratitude lives in my heart now, and it will remain with me always.
Thank you.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cUQtXdBBJn5MhiIVsamvRWrm9PmJRi1YTcqgyR0a_qk/edit?usp=sharing