Asian-American Groups Grapple With Police Response to Surge of Violence

The shooting spree Tuesday that left eight people dead including six Asian women in the Atlanta area punctuates a year of crimes against Asian Americans in the U.S. It follows a recent string of attacks on older Asian Americans, including high-profile cases in the Bay Area that were caught on security cameras.

Many Asian-American advocates say their warnings that anti-racist sentiments would manifest in continued violence have gone unheeded and that mounting fears and anxieties have been ignored or downplayed.

And after a year of protests against police brutality and calls for criminal justice reform, they’re grappling with what it takes to keep their community safe.

"It’s a divisive issue when it comes to public safety,” said activist Max Leung, who is based in San Francisco. “On the one hand, you have a segment of the Asian community who want more police and stricter punishment for crimes, and then you have another segment of the community that wants less policing and supports the defunding movement.”

Anti-Asian racism was fanned during the pandemic by several U.S. political leaders — including then-president Donald Trump, who often called the coronavirus the “Chinese flu.” Stop AAPI Hate, which started tracking acts of discrimination, harassment and physical violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders last year, identified nearly 3,800 anti-Asian incidents since last March, 6.2% of which were targeted at people over 60 years old and an overwhelming 68% at women. Voice of America reported that official hate crimes against Asian Americans grew by more than 150% in 2020. Activists say many more have gone unreported nationwide.

In the immediate wake of the Atlanta shootings that targeted three spas, cities with large Asian populations have focused on ramping up their law enforcement response. On Wednesday, the New York Police Department announced that it would deploy members of its counterterrorism unit to patrol Asian neighborhoods. Police chiefs and mayors in Seattle, Oakland and San Francisco plan to increase police staffing in Asian enclaves, too.

The police are a welcome presence for some residents — in particular seniors, and local merchants, some of whom have hired their own private security guards. Yet many Asian-American advocates fear that increasing police activity alone would do little to prevent violence, and could stoke tensions between Asian groups and the Black community, who are often subjected to racial profiling and police brutality.

“We must invest in long-term solutions that address the root causes of violence and hate in our communities,” read a statement from the Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta in response to Tuesday’s shootings. “We reject increased police presence of carceral solutions as the answers.”

Instead, local organizers say they want more government support for victims and more resources dedicated to community-based violence prevention programs. In New York City, L.A., and the Bay Area, organizers are taking these efforts up themselves, setting up volunteer groups to patrol Chinatowns in the hopes of preventing potential assaults against the elderly and small-business owners. Some are predominantly made up of volunteers from the Asian-American community; others are multiracial.

“For the Chinese community to be able to be safe in every sense of the word, we have to be working in partnership with other communities of color across the region,” said Shaw San Liu, the executive director of the Chinese Progressive Association.

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