NYPD Struggles to Contain Anti-Asian Crime
In early February, a 61-year-old Filipino man was attacked by an assailant wielding a boxcutter on the New York City subway. On February 16, two Asian American women — ages 58 and 71- were also assaulted in separate incidents in the subway. The following day, a 52-year-old Asian American woman was violently shoved into a metal newsstand in Flushing, Queens, leaving her with five stitches in her head.
These unprovoked attacks, many believe, are part of a pattern of crimes targeting Asian Americans that’s been escalating in New York City throughout the pandemic. The numbers from the past two years paint an undeniable and disturbing picture: In 2019, the NYPD recorded a single “confirmed incident” of a hate crime targeting an Asian American. Last year, that number skyrocketed to 27. In response, the NYPD has created the Asian Hate Crime Task Force. But according to Deputy Inspector Stewart Loo — the task force’s commanding officer — the unit does not currently have the manpower to prevent future anti-Asian hate crimes from occurring.
“It’s been adequate in terms of investigation. But in terms of prevention? That’s out of my hands,” said Loo, a 21-year veteran of the NYPD. “We’re going to need more officers.”
Chris Kwok, Chairman of the Issues Committee at the Asian American Bar Association of New York (AABANY), says that Asian Americans have felt increasingly vulnerable during the pandemic. “It’s bad in New York City, and it’s bad across America,” he says. “There’s palpable fear.”
Kwok says there are a number of factors — including language barriers, a relative lack of political representation, and former President Donald Trump’s repeated usage of phrases like “China virus” and “kung flu”- that have contributed to a modern perception of Asian Americans as being, in his words, “easy targets.”
The NYPD created the Asian Hate Crime Task Force in May of 2020, following a particularly dramatic spike in hate crimes targeting Asian Americans during the earliest months of the pandemic. The Task Force is staffed on a voluntary and part-time basis, which means that its members do not spend all of their working hours investigating anti-Asian hate crimes. Instead, according to Inspector Loo, the officers who have volunteered are “assigned to different units within the city, and when something like this comes up, we reassign them.”
Like Inspector Loo, Chris Kwok believes that the city could be dedicating more resources to the protection and service of its Asian American citizens. “We think they need to go further,” he said, “because it’s raging hot right now.”
Kwok says that he’s particularly concerned about the volunteer-only status of the Asian Hate Crime Task Force, which he believes leads to decreased efficiency. “When you do two jobs, you can’t do both jobs very well. So we think it should be a full-time assignment.”
