Seattle officials want you to call the police on your neighbor if you hear anyone use “racist name-calling.”
Police Chief Carmen Best and former KING 5 reporter Lori Matsukawa posted a video saying there is no tolerance for hate crimes against Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic. Which I think, we can all agree on. Where we disagree is how the police will determine what “racist name-calling” is.
“Washington state is no place for hate,” Best said in the video.
“We will document and investigate every reported crime, even racist name-calling should be reported to police,” she said. “We take this information very seriously.”
This is the same county that is trying to lower their jail population, Komonews reports King county is “working with the prosecutor and public defender to stop bookings of lesser offenses that don’t involve violence or a particular danger to the public.”
But, they’ll lock you up if you say anything negative against China.
I don’t believe for a second that Americans are blaming Asian Americans for the coronavirus but, this feels like an attempt to scare people into not saying anything negative about China and how they let a virus ravage the earth.
The FBI has warned that there could be a possible increase in crimes against Asian Americans. According to ABC News:
The FBI assesses hate crime incidents against Asian Americans likely will surge across the United States, due to the spread of coronavirus disease … endangering Asian American communities,” an FBI report said, according to ABC News.
The FBI makes this assessment based on the assumption that a portion of the US public will associate COVID-19 with China and Asian American populations.
The FBI report mentions a stabbing of a family at a Midland, Texas, store CBS 7 reported:
The 19-year-old who investigators say stabbed and cut the four people at the Midland Sam’s Club told police he was attempting to kill a family shopping in the store, according to an arrest affidavit.
Pictures posted on Facebook show that the father and his son were cut very badly across their faces. The son, who is very young, has a cut reaching from behind his ear all the way across to his eye.
Police say Jose Gomez also stabbed a Sam’s employee in the leg when he tried to stop Gomez. His hand was also cut up as he tried to get the knife away from Gomez, according to the affidavit.
Gomez was stopped by an off-duty Border Patrol agent and another store employee.
