Chinatown violence prompts crackdown
Law enforcement in Bay Area vows a tougher stance against criminals
In the wake of recent robberies and attacks in Oakland’s Chinatown, the region’s top federal and local law enforcement representatives pledged at a Monday news conference to take a tougher stance against criminals to deter violence.
They stressed the importance of more officers on the street, harsher charges for gun crimes and setting higher bail to try to keep alleged perpetrators locked up while awaiting trial.
Law enforcement leaders joined Asian American community advocates Monday, saying they mobilized in response to what police described as two “brazen daytime” armed robberies in the same location in Chinatown earlier this month.
While the victims in the recent crimes were Asian American, it is not yet clear whether they were hate crimes, which would require discrimination and bias to be the motivation for the crime. Researchers documented an increase in hate crimes against Asians and Asian Americans during the pandemic.
Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong, Federal Bureau of Investigations Special Agent in Charge Craig Fair, Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley and Patrick Gorman, federal Special Agent in Charge of the San Francisco Field Division for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, gathered to publicly highlight the incidents and their response.
O’Malley said that her office will charge enhancements, which trigger stricter punishment, for per
petrators of violent crimes involving guns, like car jacking and robberies. Courts can override those enhancements.
She also said she worked with courts over the past couple of months to set bail for gun crimes at $50,000, instead of zero, although the court will still have to prove someone can afford bail if it’s set.
“These perpetrators are ruthless and they are aggressive,” O’Malley said outside the Chinese Independent Baptist Church Monday. “They
walk the streets, particularly in Chinatown, thinking they are immune from being caught and we have to put a stop to that.”
O’Malley said her office works to divert defendants, especially youth, into rehabilitation programs and away from the criminal justice system, but stressed accountability is critical, especially when some people committing these crimes are on probation already. Armstrong agreed. The District Attorney's office also supports more than 100 crime victims, although many of the perpetrators in their cases haven’t been apprehended.
The news conference follows an increasingly heated debate in Oakland over policing and the most effective way to quell troubling levels of violence this year. Homicides spiked to 75 as of Friday, compared to only 45 by the same date in 2020 and 2019, police data shows. The number of assaults with a firearm and carjackings were more than double the mid2019 tally, although robberies of all categories were on par with prepandemic numbers.
An hour after Monday’s news conference ended, former California Sen. Barbara Boxer was assaulted and robbed just five blocks away in downtown Oakland.
But some Oakland politicians and community members say that increasing police presence and harsher prosecution won’t lead to a reduction in violence.
“Tough on crime means more caged Black and brown bodies and that never leads to safer communities,” Cat Brooks, cofounder of the Anti PoliceTerror Project, said Monday. “We want to stop crime before it happens instead of continuously ineffectively policing it.”
Brooks stressed investment in education, housing, economic opportunity, addressing mental health and communitybased responses, such as citizen ambassadors walking the streets in Chinatown, to prevent crimes and make the community safer.
Terence Long, communications director at the nonprofit Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, criticized the concept that more money for the police will make the community safer, since he said that hasn’t been the case as police spending has increased over time.
“California has been moving toward correcting the overcriminalization of our communities,” Long said. “We’ve got to fight fearbased urges that can roll back the important steps we’ve taken over the last couple years.”
The issues were debated last month when the Oakland City Council passed a twoyear budget that cut $18.4 million from Mayor Libby Schaaf ’s proposed spending on police to fund violence prevention measures and social services. Schaaf would have increased funding for the Oakland Police Department, paying for two additional police recruit academies, bringing the total to six.
The approved budget still adds $38 million to the department, but will freeze 50 vacant officer positions. The city will funnel resources to its Department of Violence Prevention, which partners with community organizations doing street outreach and intervention, and other social services. The Police Chief slammed the move as violence peaked on July 4.
The shift continues to divide residents in Oakland, with some calling for more officers and others pushing to invest in addressing the root causes of violence and to reduce funding for policing.
Residents in East Oakland, who have been hit hard by shootings, and Asian Americans, particularly in Chinatown, who have been reeling from recent attacks say the stakes are high in figuring out how to stem the violence.
The news conference was called in response to two recent attacks that occurred on consecutive days outside the Chi
nese Independent Baptist Church. At 3:15 p.m. on July 15, two men, one with a gun, approached an elderly Asian American man, robbing and injuring him, according to police. A bystander who tried to help was also pistolwhipped, security video showed.
On the nearby street corner around noon on July 16, an elderly woman and her middleaged daughter were robbed and beaten, said Carl Chan, head of the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, which organized the news conference. A TV reporter on the scene who tried to intervene narrowly escaped an attack, Chan said.
Chan, himself the victim of
an attack earlier this year, urged agencies to work together “so we are not letting criminals repeatedly offend.”
Armstrong said recent attacks “shocked our conscience.” He added an extra foot patrol of three to four officers to Chinatown the weekend following the attacks. The chief had to resort to overtime spending because of fewer resources, he said. He’s done the same in East Oakland, he added.
No arrests have been made in either attack. At Monday’s news conference, Nghia Tran, CEO of Burma Superstar restaurant group, announced a $5,000 reward — $2,500 for each attack — for any informa
tion that led to an arrest.
Tran is the head of the Crimes Against Asians Reward Fund, an unusual partnership with the San Francisco Police Officers Association established earlier this year in response to crimes targeting Asian Americans.
“You can’t even wash your car without watching your back or go shopping in Chinatown without fearing an attack,” Tran said.
Oakland police can get help from the FBI to analyze bullets and from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to trace ghost guns, which do not have a serial number, Armstrong said. Last week, ATF launched a regional firearms trafficking strike force as part of a nationwide effort to apprehend criminals using guns. The FBI is training more agents to investigate hate crimes and reaching out to different communities to encourage the public to report them.
“At the end of the day, we can’t send a message to those that want to commit violence that it’s OK,” Armstrong said. “Our community can no longer stand to be victimized this way.”