Interpreter denied, protection orders ignored: Chinese American women and advocates say legal system continues to fail them

By Carolyn Bick
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY

Zhen Jin has lived in Kenmore for four years, taking care of her 89-year-old legally blind and deaf uncle. The 66-year-old Chinese American immigrant has lived in Seattle for a quarter of a century.

But Jin was recently forced to move out of the home she owns and relocate to a safe house, after the partner of now-former Seattle Police Department (SPD) Officer Burton Hill—who was fired from SPD for his off-duty misconduct, including racist and other derogatory epithets and threats against Jin—filed for a protection order against Jin. The court issued an order against Jin on June 6 and upheld it on July 18.

While Jin recently moved back into her home shortly before publication—Jin’s attorney, Joyce Shui, said that the safehouse was ultimately too far from Jin’s workplace and from her uncle, who needs care—she is now once again forced to face daily threats and intimidation from Hill and his partner, Agnes Miggins.

Shui said that the protection order that forced Jin out of her home is just one in a series of actions meant to harass and harm Jin. These actions against Jin began years ago—but short of hard-won court victories and SPD’s removal of Hill from his post, support and help has been nearly nonexistent for Jin, particularly from the police.

The Kenmore Police Department (KPD) is staffed by deputies from the King County Sheriff’s Office (KCSO). In response to a request for comment for this story, the KCSO told the Northwest Asian Weekly to file a records request. It often takes several months for a records requestor to see even one installment of records.

Longstanding harassment

Hill was fired in May 2024, following an investigation into his off-duty conduct. In late August 2022, multiple people witnessed Hill and his partner, Agnes Miggins, spewing racial slurs, false accusations, and hateful, threatening language at Jin. Someone also recorded the event.

Hill and Miggins had frequently engaged in such behavior since Jin moved in. Miggins served as the president of the Homeowner’s Association (HOA) of the condominium complex where Jin and her uncle lived, until the court prohibited Miggins from serving on the board, in a 10-year protection order issued against her.

Shui said that Miggins should have immediately informed the HOA and removed herself from the board. But she didn’t. It wasn’t until Shui informed the HOA board of the court’s order that the HOA itself removed Miggins several days later.

Shui said Jin hasn’t been the couple’s only target.

Lun Jiang, another Chinese American woman who formerly lived in the Kenmore condominium complex, was forced to move out of her condo, after facing racist and unrelenting harassment at the hands of Hill and Miggins, according to Shui. Jiang and her family had lived in the neighborhood for close to 20 years. At the time, Jiang, 65, was living with and taking care of her 91-year-old mother.

In September 2024, a judge granted Jin and Jiang 10-year protection orders against Miggins. But on June 6, a King County Superior Court judge granted Miggins a protection order against Jin, causing Jin to immediately move out of her Kenmore home.

In addition to the hardships on Jin, this made it extremely difficult for Jin’s elderly uncle to receive the care he needed. For a little more than a month, he was forced to live alone.

Jamie Cho, a community advocate for Jin and former professor, said that Jin’s uncle has a son and a daughter who live in the Seattle area, and provided some support. Jin tried to go back to the condo to bring him food and do various things for him, but had to be sure her neighbors were not home when she arrived and left.

Hill and Miggins have five different Ring cameras set up in such a way that they capture Jin’s every movement. These cameras are pointed at her front door, garage, living room, and bedroom, Shui said. According to Shui, Hill and Miggins have attempted to use anything Jin does that’s captured on the camera against her.

For instance, Shui said, the couple has accused Jin of leaving out a bottle of poisoned water to kill their dog. Another time, she said, Miggins claimed that Jin was carrying a knife—not to open boxes in her own garage, which Jin had done for years—but to threaten Miggins.

Community pleas, limited response

Community members at a Kenmore City Hall public comment session. Photo provided by Joyce Shui

At the June 9 Kenmore City Council meeting, just after the court issued Miggins a protection order against Jin, Jin and several members of the public pleaded for council members to step in and do something to help. Most of the public comment given that night was in support of Jin, who, through a translator, detailed to councilmembers her struggles.

Jin described one incident where she tried, as she had so many times before, to get help from the police, after feeling threatened by Hill’s and Miggins’ actions.

Zhen Jin providing public comment during the June 9, 2025 Kenmore City Council meeting. Photo by Joyce Shui

“Every time they get home, they will make faces in front of my house, and say something bad about me,” Jin said, before starting to cry. “This one time, I had to call the police, because my racist neighbor had this scary look in his eyes.”

Because of the language barrier—and the fact that interpretation services weren’t provided—Jin ended up spending two hours trying to get Kenmore police to respond.

Even after the police arrived, she recalled, “They said that maybe because [Hill] was in a bad mood, that’s why he had that look on [his face].”

“The Kenmore police have been quick to defend and make excuses for a former police officer and his wife,” Shui said, “and they have been quick to blame the victim.”

This response from and treatment by Kenmore police is not unusual for Jin. The refusal to provide interpretation services for Jin is a chronic one, Cho told Councilmember Nathan Loutsis in a separate meeting.

Dr. Jamie Cho, providing public comment during the June 9, 2025 Kenmore City Council meeting. Photo provided by Joyce Shui

Jin has faced ongoing challenges with the language barrier during her interactions with Kenmore police. According to Cho, when she’s asked for a translator, the police tell Jin they “can understand her just fine”—despite the two-hour call for help that suggests otherwise.

“The requested interpretation services would not be for the police,” Cho explained. “They would be for Jin, a non-native English speaker, to make herself better understood.”

“The police’s substituting [their] judgment for the witness’s judgment is a failing of the system and another example of institutional bias,” Shui said of Kenmore police’s refusal to provide interpretation services.

The police’s refusal to help appears to echo Miggins’ accusation that Jin is “gaming” the system by allegedly pretending she can’t understand English well. Miggins accused Jin of this in a mid-December 2023 hearing.

The only comment the KCSO made to the Northwest Asian Weekly was that “both parties currently have anti-harassment orders against each other, and the Kenmore police have responded 20 times over the past two and a half years.”

This statement, however, does not appear to reflect the full context of the situation—including details involving the KCSO’s own officers. There have been instances where officers did not enforce the protection order against Miggins, Shui said. Concerns have also been raised about how some officers interacted with Jin, a non-native English speaker and immigrant, in ways she experienced as dismissive or unhelpful.

Furthermore, available information indicates that it was Hill and Miggins who contacted police at least 20 times regarding Jin, rather than there being an equal number of calls involving both parties. According to Shui, the most recent police call was on Aug. 3 with a police car and two officers arriving within minutes of Zhen walking in the public condo area after throwing away her trash.

Shui told the Northwest Asian Weekly that “the most troubling aspect” of the court’s decision to uphold Miggins’ protection order against Jin is how the court handled the issue of interpretation. As seen in Jin’s repeated interactions with police, interpretation—or more specifically, the lack of it—has been a significant and ongoing concern throughout the case.

Shui said that Miggins has, on multiple occasions during court hearings, objected to Jin receiving interpretation services. Shui also stated that the HOA’s management company, Ewing & Clark, has not provided interpretation support when requested. In addition, she noted that the court has at times declined to allow additional time for hearings involving interpretation needs—and on at least one occasion, an interpreter reportedly was not available.

Shui and Cho say that Jin’s lack of access to interpretation influenced the court’s decision to establish the June 6 protection order against Jin.

After the court issued the protection order, Shui moved for reconsideration, writing that Jin “received only stuttered syllables, filler sounds, and fragmented words—none of which conveyed the hearing’s content.” The court’s decision reads: “As this Court stated repeatedly during the June 3 and 6 hearings, the interpreters are certified by the Administrative Office of the Courts for all court proceedings, including for simultaneous translations. While consecutive interpretation can provide a recording of the actual translation and is in fact used when a limited English proficient person testifies in court, simultaneous interpretations are used in Zoom court hearings.”

Shui, who is multilingual, says the judge and system miss the point.

“Simultaneous interpretation is not by itself the issue,” Shui explained. “However, simultaneous interpretation requires an interpreter, who in this case had to hear from an unfamiliar cast of characters and to listen and speak at the same time. In this case, the interpreter could not do that and the result was that Ms. Jin did not know what was happening for the full length of the hearing.”

Another victim

After public comment had concluded, the mayor promised on-record to follow up with Jin. When no one followed up, Cho reached out to the council. Loutsis and Jon Culver responded, but only Loutsis followed up on that original reach-out.

Cho, Jin, and Jiang met with Loutsis on June 21.

Jiang described to Loutsis how the couple started harassing her in 2022. Jiang’s family had purchased the condo more than two decades prior, and Jiang and her late mother used to live underneath the couple. She told Loutsis that it started when she left a note asking the couple not to park in the red emergency fire zone outside the complex (which is against HOA rules).

She also said that both Miggins and Hill would park Hill’s long car in such a way that made it difficult for Jiang to leave her own parking spot. Jiang addressed this in the note, too.

That’s when Hill and Miggins started to bang on the floor of their condo into the wee hours of the morning, keeping Jiang awake at night. Jiang recalled that the banging usually began at 10 p.m., and would often continue until 3:30 a.m. the following day.

“Most of the time, [Miggins was] drunk,” Jiang said. “One time, she was so loud, I called 911. The operator said, ‘Oh, yes, I can hear it. It’s very loud.’”

Jiang said that the operator recorded the sound, and that the police came. But when the police showed up, the banging abruptly stopped.

“I think [Miggins] noticed [the police] there,” Jiang said.

But the police’s visit didn’t deter the couple from continuing to bang on Jiang’s ceiling. In the days and months that followed, Jiang said that Hill and Miggins would bang on their floor two or three times a week.

The loud banging also frightened Jiang’s mother.

“One night, she was crying, ‘What did we do to her (Miggins)?’” Jiang recalled her mother asking.

Jiang has a heart condition herself. Every time Jiang would hear Miggins come home, her heart would start pounding.

One year, the stress Jiang experienced from the couple’s alleged harassment led her to visit urgent care six times.

Jiang said that this lasted for more than two years—but the proverbial straw that forced her and her elder mother to move out was an explicit death threat from Miggins.

Jiang was sitting outside her garage, painting a chair, when, all of a sudden, Miggins drove her car directly towards Jiang.

She stopped just short of hitting Jiang.

“‘Don’t mess with me, you ch–-k,’” Jiang recalled Miggins saying to her, as Miggins stepped out of her car.

Jiang and her mother moved out of their condo shortly after that.

Under current HOA rules, Jiang cannot rent out the condo. There is a three-person cap on homeowners who are allowed to rent out their units, unless the board decides to grant a hardship waiver. This means that Jiang is losing money on a place she can’t even live in. Shui said that both Jiang and Jin have submitted “highly detailed” requests for hardship waivers. The HOA board has, so far, denied them.

Cho asked Loutsis to write a letter of support asking the HOA for an exemption to this, given the circumstances.

Ongoing harassment, lack of police protection

Largely through Cho, Jin spoke to Loutsis about the treatment she had received at the hands of Hill and Miggins, who live next to Jin and her uncle. Jin said that the things of which they accused her—spitting on their dog, trying to kill their dog by leaving chicken bones in the courtyard, and so on—were false.

Jin said that she also faced the parking issue Jiang did, on top of several other issues, which appear to run afoul of Kenmore city law and the HOA’s own policies.

The couple also has a golden retriever whom they let roam around off-leash, and who would enter Jin’s and her uncle’s condo, when the pair would leave the door open for a breeze to move through the unit on hot days. Both of these things are against Kenmore’s leash laws—which the judge who granted Jin her 10-year protection order wrote that Miggins had to follow—and, Jin said, the HOA’s own rules.

Both Jin and her uncle are afraid of dogs, because in the cultures in which they grew up, dogs are not kept as tamed pets. They also both have allergies, and Hill and Miggins allegedly allowed their dog to defecate in common areas, as well as leave fur everywhere. Moreover, Jin’s uncle will sometimes take out the trash. But because he is legally blind and deaf, he can’t see or hear the dog, and has fallen, when the dog has gotten in the way.

The HOA’s own rules state that the condos “are not designed for and are not reasonably appropriate for the maintenance of large pets or animals,” and that the Board may issue “rules and regulations” permitting tenants to own only “cats, small dogs, and similar household pets.”

Miggins claims that her dog, an English cream retriever, is small. However, English cream retrievers are a kind of golden retriever, all of which are classified as at least medium dogs, according to the American Kennel Club.

Jin also said that Hill and Miggins once threw garbage in front of her garage door.

Even when Jin was the one to call the police on Hill and Miggins, the police would “act like they were in cahoots” with Hill, Cho said, paraphrasing for Jin. Cho pointed out that when Miggins violates the 10-year protection order, “the police do not respond.”

“[The police] don’t even really document what has happened, in relation to the protection order,” Cho continued. “I have been there at least two times, when the police have been called, and they have been very condescending and not supportive.”

As mentioned earlier in this article, the couple also has at least five different cameras, all of which appear to be trained on Jin’s condo and parking space. At one point, Jin also decided to put up a Ring camera. Three days after installing it, Miggins demanded Jin take down the camera.

When Jin asked why, Miggins said, “You’re just putting that Ring camera up so your uncle can see my breasts.”

Cho said that the only defense Jin previously had was to wear a body camera herself, or take out a camera to record any interactions. Otherwise, Cho said, Miggins would twist the interactions.

In filing for a protection order against Jin, Miggins claimed that she was being stalked and harassed, because Jin recorded their interactions for self-protection. However, Miggins appears to have distorted Jin’s reasons for recording her by claiming that Jin was harassing and stalking her by recording her. Jin’s only protection against Miggins’ harassment was to have video evidence showing Miggins’ racist and often unlawful behaviors towards her.

Notably, Miggins was also ordered in the 10-year protection order to stop recording Jin, but she and Hill have maintained and added to their collection of cameras pointed towards Jin.

Now, thanks to Miggins’ protection order, Jin may not be able to record Miggins at all. This has put Jin in fear for her safety, and has compromised her ability to prove the couple’s harassment.

City councilmember hears concerns, offers limited remedies

Loutsis suggested that, because the dog issue would fall under Animal Control’s purview, Jin called them, instead of the regular police. Since Animal Control is separate from the KPD, he said, they would not come into the situation with the same history or background of engaging in the conflict as a regular KPD officer would.

Loutsis also noted that all KPD officers are KCSO’s deputies. The City of Kenmore contracts with the KCSO to provide officer staffing.

“I will speak with our city administration and those who handle the contract with them and see if there’s levers that we can have or things that we can do,” he said. “Sometimes, it may be a slightly slower process because we have to talk to their counterparts in the county and then work through some of those things.”

Loutsis also said that, after the council first heard of the incident, several councilmembers reached out to the City of Kenmore’s administration and the Kenmore Chief of Police—who is also a KCSO officer—to gather more information.

“I know that we are going to be receiving every amount of data that they have—so, reports and notes and call-outs and things like that,” Loutsis said. “We’re going to sift through that and uncover what we can and go through that. Just to say that we are doing a lot. It’s just that it’s not always super public.”

Loutsis followed up with Cho on July 15, and apologized for the lengthy delay between their meeting and his response. He said that he just heard back from Kenmore’s City Manager that afternoon.

“She informed (the Council) that the City Attorney is still reviewing options for what we can legally do,” Loutsis wrote, also explaining that there were a couple other legal matters that had popped up for the city attorney to deal with. “That said, we were told the Council will be receiving a report from staff about this in the near future. I wasn’t given an exact date, but I will follow up with her and see if I can get some more clarity.”

In response to requests for comment and any updates to the council’s progress on the matter, Councilmember Debra Srebnik said that the council expected a briefing on the matter on July 21 or July 28.

When the Northwest Asian Weekly followed up to ask whether the council had been briefed, and by whom, Srebnik responded that they would be meeting with Kenmore Police Chief Brandon Moen on July 28.

On Aug. 1, the Northwest Asian Weekly followed up to ask about the results or information the council learned at that meeting.

“Didn’t happen,” Srebnik responded. “I guess it’ll be in Sept (September).”

Shui said that she finally received a response from Kenmore City Attorney Dawn Reitan about Jin’s case.

Reitan suggested Shui file a complaint with internal affairs.