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Members of the New York Police Department (NYPD) Community Affairs Rapid Response Team patrol through the Chinatown section of Manhattan following deadly shootings at three spas in Georgia in New York City, New York, USA, March 17, 2021. REUTERS / Mike Segar
NEW YORK (AP) – New York City plans to deploy an all-Asian undercover police team and expand community outreach in more than 200 languages to combat the rise in hate crimes against Asians, authorities said Thursday.
“If you are going to commit a hate crime in New York City, we will find you,” said New York City Police Commissioner Dermot Shea, unveiling the two-way plan to combat bias crime.
“We are not going to tolerate anyone being targeted because of their skin color, their religion, their sexual preference or anything else,” Shea said.
Just days after a series of assaults on Asian Americans in New York City last weekend, Shea said he was building up the NYPD’s covert force with plainclothes officers, all of Asian descent. Starting this weekend, they will patrol the subway, grocery stores and other venues to stop anti-Asian incidents totaling 26 so far this year, including 12 robberies, police said.
“The next person you address through threatening speech or activity could be a plainclothes New York police officer, so think twice,” Shea said.
The 26 incidents so far have resulted in seven arrests, police said. Those incidents included 12 assaults so far this year, three of them last weekend, police said. By comparison, at this time last year, no assaults on Asian Americans were reported, police said.
Because hate crimes too often go unreported, now anyone calling 911 can pronounce a single word in English for their native language, such as Mandarin, and law enforcement operators will help access translators who speak more than 200 languages, police said.
Advocates linked the rise in hate crimes to blaming the Asian-American community in the Pacific Islands for the spread of the coronavirus. The community reported an increase in violence since March 2020, when then-President Donald Trump began repeatedly referring to COVID-19 as the “China virus” and the “kung flu,” which some say fueled the anti-Asian sentiment.
Hate crimes against Asian Americans increased 149% in 2020 in 16 major cities compared to 2019, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. The violent incidents included people being cut with a box cutter, setting fire and verbal harassment, according to testimony at a US Congressional hearing on violence against Asians convened this month.
The deadliest incident was this month’s shooting at three Atlanta-area spas that left eight dead, six of them Asian women. A 21-year-old white male has been charged with multiple counts of murder, and police investigating the motives have not ruled out the possibility that the attacks were sparked, at least in part, by anti-immigrant or anti-Asian sentiments.
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