Police are searching for two suspects who targeted people of Asian descent in separate incidents in New York City, according to the city police Department.
On March 14, police said, a man walked into a building on Columbus Avenue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and got into a fight with a 23-year-old woman, according to pix11. The suspect made anti-Asian comments and spat at the victim before fleeing south on Columbus Avenue, police said.
Police said the woman was not injured in the incident. The suspect is 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighs 200 pounds.
On April 19, another man spray-painted anti-Asian remarks on the front door of a liquor store on Mott Avenue in Far Rockaway, Queens. The suspect then boarded a bus and left the scene.
The New York City Police Department's Hate Crimes Task force is investigating the incident. Police described the suspect as a man of medium build with a beard under his chin.
According to the New York Police Department, at least 150 hate crimes have been reported citywide so far this year, down nearly 27 percent compared to the same period in 2022. National statistics in recent years have shown an alarming increase in hate crimes against people of Asian descent, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Stop AAPI Hate, a nonprofit group, received 9,081 reports of anti-Asian incidents between March 2020 and June 2021. Since the coronavirus was first reported in China, people of Asian and Pacific Islander descent have been scapegoated solely because of their ethnicity, according to the Associated Press.
Activists, community groups and federal and local governments have since pushed back against the tide of hate. In New York City, the NYPD has created an Asian Hate Crime Task Force to patrol the streets of vulnerable neighborhoods, both to deter criminals and to keep residents safe.
