China Overseas Chinese Network, September 5. According to the US "World Journal" report, have Asians become criminal targets?

It is always the focus of community disputes.

The San Francisco Police Department released the ethnic data of crime victims from January to June 2020.

In the data on victims of multiple crime types, the number of Asians has decreased compared to the same period in 2019.

　　City Councillor Ma Zhaoming introduced legislation in 2019, requiring the San Francisco Police Department to regularly publish statistics on the ethnicity, gender, and age of crime victims every year.

At that time, there were voices in the society that Chinese Americans were often targeted by criminals and became victims, so Ma Zhaoming proposed legislation to require the police to make statistics and release data.

　　Since the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, many voices have pointed out that Asian and Pacific Americans have once again become the target of crime.

However, in terms of reported data, this is not the case.

　　According to the latest police report, in the first six months of 2020 compared with the first six months of 2019, the number of crimes such as sexual assault, hate crime, theft, child and elder abuse, assault, domestic violence, robbery, etc. decline.

For example, hate crimes against Asian Americans have unexpectedly decreased by 42.9%, which does not match the impression of community media and other reports.

　　In the four categories of car theft, homicide, robbery and damaged items, the number of people has increased.

Specifically, the number of victims in homicides rose from 2 to 3, thus increasing by 50%.

Robbery increased by 7.7%.

　　The decline in the number of Asian victims in the crime data does not match the trend reported by the mass media.

Ma Zhaoming responded by saying that he believed that many anti-Asian incidents did not go to the police station, or after they went to the police station, the police did not include them in the category of "hate crime".

　　He said that in May, there were seven consecutive robberies against Chinese elders in the sunset area, but the incidents were eventually classified as robberies, not hate crimes against Asians.

　　Moreover, Ma Zhaoming believes that since the quarantine at home, the lifestyle of residents has changed drastically from the previous year, so it is difficult to compare directly.

He also expressed his dissatisfaction with the way the police present the data and will continue to communicate with the police station and make suggestions for improvement.

(Li Han)