The New York Police Department’s Hate Crime Task Force is searching for a woman after she allegedly pepper-sprayed four people while making anti-Asian remarks. The task force released several photos in addition to a video, after Saturday’s incident. While the video does not contain audio, the woman in question can be seen holding what looks like a canister of pepper spray before deploying it.
According to the police department, the incident occurred just after 6 PM ET near Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. A woman was sitting in a public plaza when she began hurling hateful speech and slurs to at least four Asian women before proceeding to pepper spray them without cause. The victims refused medical attention at the scene, police said.
While asking to remain nameless and not shown on camera, three of the four victims related their experiences to ABC News 7. The women shared that they were checking out the flower installations in the Meatpacking District when a stranger picked an argument with them out of the blue.
"She turned around, and she was like, 'You guys are trying to harass me,'" one victim said of the attacker, who at the time was sitting on a large rock. Another victim replied, “We're not trying to bother you."
According to ABC News 7, one of the victims even apologized to the suspect in order to stop the situation from escalating. "Like, ‘I'm sorry, I didn't intend to make you feel that way,’" the victim said.
The woman then began a racist rant, during which the group started recording.
"Saying like, ‘Go back to where you came from, you don't belong here,’" one victim said. "She pointed to an Asian bystander who was a man, we didn't know who he was, pointed at him and said, ‘Take your (expletive) back to your country.’"
"We distanced ourselves, we tried to do the right thing," another victim said.
The four victims and at least one bystander recorded as much of the incident as they could, despite feeling the burn of the pepper spray on their faces and in their eyes, they said.
"It was so painful. I couldn't open my eyes for about 30 minutes," one victim said.
Supporting the victims’ claims that more happened beyond the video, NYPD Sergeant Anwar Ishmael told CNN that at some point during the altercation, an unidentified Asian man passed the group on the sidewalk, and the woman confronted him, too. According to Ishmael, the woman allegedly turned to the man and said, "You take all your b***hes back to where you came from.”
But the woman’s racist spree doesn't end there. According to ABC News 7, the group of women attacked later got a message from someone who said they were treated the same way from the same woman less than an hour earlier. In that incident, the woman allegedly pepper-sprayed and verbally abused three people, including a 13-year-old girl.
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The attack follows an alarming rise in hate crimes targeting the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community across the country. According to the NYPD Hate Crimes Dashboard, 110 of 577 hate crime incidents between March 31, 2021, and March 31, 2022, targeted Asians. In March 2022 alone, there were nine incidents treated as hate crimes targeting Asian Americans, with five arrests.
Additionally, data released by the FBI found that hate crimes targeting people of Asian descent in the U.S. rose by 70% last year when compared to the number of such incidents in 2019. The report found that more than 10,000 people reported hate crimes to law enforcement, the highest tally of reported hate crimes since 2008.
The spread of misinformation regarding the COVID-19 pandemic has been connected to an increase in hate crimes and xenophobia toward Asian Americans. Hate crime data from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino found that hate crimes against Asian Americans surged in 2020 in at least 15 cities, Daily Kos reported. As the cities were further reviewed, a new report indicated that crimes against Asian Americans rose by 169% when comparing the first quarter of 2020 to the first quarter of 2021.
The AAPI community needs our support now more than ever. Hate is the real virus, and we cannot let it continue. Daily Kos has compiled resources to help our community stand united against racism. Help us put an end to this hate.