REACHING OUT TO FIGHT HATE
San Diego police officers check in on Asian American businesses, sharing information on how to report crimes
The eyes of an employee at Go Go Sushi & Ramen in Mira Mesa filled with tears as she spoke to a San Diego police officer in Korean, telling the officer she has been called racial slurs on the job on several occasions.
Officer Sharon Jung told the woman that the San Diego Police Department is available to help and wants the public to report hate incidents and crimes against people of Asian and Pacific Islander descent.
Jung and other police officers delivered that message last week at several businesses in the busy shopping centers in Mira Mesa, a neighborhood with a large concentration of Asian American residents and businesses. Officers also visited businesses in Linda Vista, the Convoy District in Kearny Mesa and City Heights in recent weeks.
The outreach at more than 200 businesses came in response to a national rise in anti-Asian hate incidents. Experts say the coronavirus’s origin in China fueled the surge in such incidents, which spread a sense of fear within many Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. The March 16 shooting in the Atlanta area, in which a gunman killed eight people, including six Asian women, compounded that fear.
The community walks in the neighborhoods across San Diego allowed police officers to check on businesses and their customers, and share information about hate incidents and crimes. Small teams of officers and volunteers handed out file folders with information that explained what constitutes a hate crime, how to report attacks, and what police ask when they take a report.
In San Diego County, law enforcement agencies didn’t refer a single anti-Asian hate crime to the District Attorney’s Office between 2017 and 2019, but last year, the office was handed three cases. Prosecutors filed felony charges in all three.
San Diego Police Chief David Nisleit has expressed concern that anti-Asian hate may go unreported. Speaking to a crowd of business owners and residents in the Convoy District earlier this month, he said ensuring that the public feels comfortable reporting hate crimes — and hate incidents — is a top priority
for him.
Like Nisleit, officers in Mira Mesa stressed that the Police Department wants to know about hate crimes, as well as hate incidents that don’t rise to the level of a crime — which include racial slurs — so that the department can have a better grasp of what’s happening across San Diego.
“Sometimes (the public may) feel it’s something minor,
but we want them to call us,” said Sgt. Lem Sainsanoy, a member of the Police Department’s MultiCultural Community Relations Office, which works to address the needs of refugees and immigrants. “I want people to feel that they have access to us.”
While some employees at businesses in Mira Mesa seemed hesitant to engage in lengthy conversations, others opened up, especially to officers who spoke to them in their native language.
As customers shopped at the bustling Seafood City Supermarket on Mira Mesa Boulevard, Sainsanoy and other officers, joined by Councilman Chris Cate, connected with an assistant store manager, at times speaking back and forth in Tagalog.
“Call if you need anything at all,” Sainsanoy insisted before they walked out of the store.
Afterward, the assistant store manager, Miriam Advincula, said she appreciated the outreach.
“Sometimes we get
scared with all (the antiAsian hate attacks reported in) the news,” she said, adding that she hopes she won’t ever need to call police to report an attack.
At Daiso Japan, a variety store, assistant manager Serina Cepeda said the outreach was “great.”
“It’s good to know that they’re there for us,” she said, adding that “with everything going on,” it’s important to “ease the fear of police” within communities.
A short distance away, Jung walked into US Nails
and handed a folder to an employee.
“We don’t want you to feel scared,” Jung said as one employee gave a man a pedicure and another employee applied black nail polish on a woman’s fingernails.
Sainsanoy said he hopes the business employees become “ambassadors” who reassure others, including customers, that they can and should call police to report any hate crimes or incidents. The sergeant also hopes their visible presence at the businesses in recent
weeks forces perpetrators “to think twice” about committing hateful acts.
“We’re not messing around,” Sainsanoy said.
The Police Department will soon roll out about 1,000 QR code stickers, Sainsanoy said. The QR code will link to resources on hate crimes when scanned with a cellphone camera. The plan is to place the stickers at businesses and places of worship.