NYPD to Bolster Presence in Asian Neighborhoods After Atlanta Shooting

NEW YORK
Demonstrators participate at a rally to raise awareness of anti-Asian violence in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

The New York Police department will assign additional officers in Asian-American communities such as Flushing, Queens and Sunset Park, Brooklyn and Chinatown in Manhattan in response to an overnight shooting in Georgia on Tuesday that seemed to have targeted Korean-American women, CBS2 reported.

The NYPD Counterterrorism Department said on social media that it was “monitoring the shooting of Asian Americans in Georgia.”

“While there is no known nexus to NYC we will be deploying assets to our great Asian communities across the city out of an abundance of caution,” the department tweeted.

On Tuesday morning, Mayor Bill de Blasio condemned the killings as “domestic violence” and said the city had sent its police and counterterrorism forces to patrol Asian neighborhoods.

“We have to stop Asian hate. We have to focus our energies on supporting our Asian-American brothers and sisters,” the mayor said. “We also need to use the strength of the NYPD to protect our Asian American communities.”

At least eight people, six of them Asian-American women, were shot and killed in their workplaces in Atlanta, Georgia. The suspect is in custody and the FBI are investigating.

Local Korean news outlets reported that four of the women were Korean American, part of a steadily growing community in Georgia.

Earlier Tuesday, NBC News published a thorough report that there were roughly 2,800 hate crimes ranging from verbal harassments to violent physical attacks against Asian Americans in the last five months.

New York City has seen numerous violent crimes against Asian Americans, many of them elderly women, in a surge of hate crimes over the past year. Last month, city and community leaders condemned the violence. The Asian Hate Crime Task Force is working with the Hate Crime Task Force and the City Human Rights Commission to prosecute these random attacks.

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smarcus@hamodia.com

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