San Francisco public safety officials joined residents Tuesday night at a Chinatown public meeting to discuss recent crimes against Asians, especially high-profile attacks of senior citizens.
The latest attack was the assault and robbery of a 70-year-old woman who was followed into her Francisco Street building and robbed. Police Chief William Scott said investigators believed four people were responsible, including three children, one as young as 11 years old. The attack came days after Gregory Chew, a veteran of various city commissions, was attacked by a man who pulled up to him on a bike on Third Street and started hitting him.
Scott, who urged residents to come forward with incidents of racism, said that the city had seen two and a half years of attacks against Asians, especially elders.
“Some people are afraid to go outside,” Scott told a crowd of perhaps 200 at Victory Hall on Stockton Street. “We cannot allow that to be the case in this great city.”
San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott is seen during a town hall in wake of recent violence toward Asian American elderlies in the Chinatown neighborhood of San Francisco, Calif. Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022.
Stephen Lam / The ChronicleDistrict Attorney Brooke Jenkins, who was appointed 40 days ago to finish the term of recalled DA Chesa Boudin, said things are different under her regime. Boudin was recalled in a June election after receiving persistent criticism for allegedly not taking hate crimes more seriously, an attack Boudin pushed back on by pointing to hate crime prosecutions his office engaged in.
But Jenkins, as she often has, sought to show that she wasn’t Boudin.
“I come to you as a sign of change,” said Jenkins, standing before the crowd with a microphone. “I know that for the last two and a half years, it has been tough on many levels... with all of these attacks, not knowing whether or not you can step outside of the door and be safe.”
Jenkins was greeted with heavy applause.
She assured those in attendance that her office would work to prosecute hate crimes where evidence supports it. But whether or not attacks on Asian people meet the legal criteria for a hate crime, she insisted she’d see consequences for the perpetrators.
Camila Ng, 73, a retired Chinatown resident who attended, told The Chronicle she’s been increasingly worried since the start of the pandemic. She feels like she can’t go a day without hearing about a crime committed against AAPI residents.
“When you turn on the TV, you see it every, every day,” Ng said, holding a grocery back with fresh aloe she picked up on the way to the event.
To be extra careful, she does her shopping in the daylight.
In total, San Francisco recorded 141 hate-crime offenses last year, a 139% increase over 2020, according to California Department of Justice statistics. Authorities referred 30 cases to the District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted 20 as hate crimes and another seven as other crimes.
The national statistics are grim.
San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott speaks during a town hall in wake of recent violence toward Asian American elderlies in the Chinatown neighborhood of San Francisco, Calif. Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022.
Stephen Lam / The ChronicleStop AAPI Hate, a data collection project by the AAPI Equity Alliance, Chinese for Affirmative Action and San Francisco State University’s Asian American Research Initiative, has tallied nearly 11,500 incidents of anti-Asian hostility nationally two years into the pandemic, with more than two-thirds of the incidents involving some form of harassment.
One in six incidents involved physical violence, the report said.
Adrienne Fong said she worried officials weren’t working hard enough to attack the root causes of the crimes against Asians in San Francisco. After listening to officials talk about more police presence in Chinatown and stiffer penalties in court, Fong was left wanting more talk about trying to better understand the systemic issues that are behind the crime.
“It's like they're putting a broken Band-aid on something,” Fong told The Chronicle.
Joyce Nakamura also wanted to see the city going after root causes. She doesn’t want police to be the only answer. Social services are needed and different partners to attack the problem in a holistic way.
“I'm afraid to go out on my own, in different incidences I have been verbally and physically attacked,” Nakamura said.
At the same time, she said she didn’t want sweeping statements about how things will get better. She wants results.
Joshua Sharpe is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: joshua.sharpe@sfchronicle.com, Twitter: @joshuawsharpe
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S.F. public safety officials join Asian community members to discuss assaults, robberies - San Francisco Chronicle
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