Since Stop AAPI Hate, some Oakland Chinatown residents are rethinking crime prevention

This story was produced in partnership with Oakland Voices, a community journalism program and outlet led by the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.

It was February 2021, and Oakland Chinatown resident Lily Zhu was frightened.

There had been a brutal attack against an elderly man in broad daylight in her neighborhood, a 91-year-old shoved headfirst onto the pavement. Amid a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes and xenophobic sentiment across the U.S., the incident became a focal point for the burgeoning Stop AAPI Hate movement. Hollywood actors Daniel Dae Kim and Daniel Wu put up a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. “Despite the skyrocketing number of hate crimes against Asian Americans this past year,” Wu wrote on Instagram, “our pleas for help go unheard. The crimes somehow excused.”

Later, it would emerge that the victim of that crime was Latino — not Asian, as earlier reports had it. But Zhu didn’t know that at the time. Nor could she have known that the case would ultimately not be prosecuted as a hate crime. What she did know was that she was scared to walk around her own neighborhood. It wasn’t as if she could’ve stayed inside, either.  As the primary caregiver for her disabled husband, Zhu, a senior citizen, still had to leave their home to run errands.

She believed more police would make the area safer. She was not alone in this. Nationwide, a movement to combat anti-Asian violence was coalescing within a hate-crime framework that, regardless of the intentions of groups like Stop AAPI Hate, emphasized the role of police and prosecutors. And many of Zhu’s neighbors in Chinatown agreed with her. Some were victims of attacks and robberies, and whether they were targeted because of their race, elders, in particular, felt anxious about going outside. She believed law enforcement was one of the only ways to prevent crime. In her view, criminals who harmed others needed to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Three years later, Zhu took a trip to San Quentin State Prison. It changed her perspective on public safety — and how the Chinatown community can heal. And it turns out she was not alone in this.

In late 2023, tensions within Oakland’s business community peaked when dozens of merchants — including several in Chinatown — participated in a two-hour symbolic strike to demand that local, state and national law enforcement agencies enact tougher security measures in Oakland, such as installing license plate readers citywide and bringing in the National Guard.

Certain ideas about crime and public safety found a stronghold among business owners in the area. Oakland Chinatown Chamber Foundation President Carl Chan was one of the organizers of the business strike. A public safety activist who has helped lead the recall campaign against Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, Chan said that safety in Chinatown hasn’t improved over the past three years, attributing it to scant police presence and city leaders missing the deadline for a $15 million retail theft prevention grant, among other reasons.

“We’re seeing that seniors are, again, afraid to walk down the street,” he said. “A lot of folks are scared.”

Chan said that Price’s progressive stance on criminal justice is too lenient and has resulted in a rise in robberies, assaults and other types of crime in Oakland Chinatown.

Maggie Fang, owner of From the Heart Florist on Webster Street, said that since 2021, she’s felt unsafe operating her business and is a proponent of expanding policing in Chinatown.

“If I were starting over, I would not open a business here,” she said.

The Oakland Police Department does not have crime data specifically for Chinatown, but it does track crimes by police area; Chinatown is in Area 1, which also comprises West Oakland, Jack London Square and parts of downtown. OPD’s crime statistics for Area 1 show a decrease in violent crimes, which includes homicides, assaults, rapes and robberies, from 2019 to 2022, but that doesn’t mean crime didn’t spike in Chinatown. There appears to have been a 19% increase in violent crimes from 2022 to 2023 across Area 1. According to OPD’s most recent weekly crime report, violent crimes in Area 1 have decreased by 21% compared with the same time last year.

Even if the numbers do show a decline in violent crime in Chinatown, for those who support more policing, there are always high-profile incidents to cite as evidence of ongoing peril. Chan mentioned the April robbery of Phuong Jewelry, in which a group of eight armed people ransacked the family-owned jewelry store in Oakland Chinatown in broad daylight. Earlier this year, an internal email in one Chinatown-based organization, citing OPD’s liaison officer in the neighborhood, warned of Asian and Asian American women being targeted in smash-and-grab robberies of their purses while they were inside their cars.

In 2021, to help Chinatown recover from the COVID pandemic and the rise in crimes, several residents, business owners, property owners and nonprofits in the area established the Oakland Chinatown Improvement Council, a community benefit district. According to its website, the OCIC is a “long-term solution to make our community feel safe, clean, and welcoming again.”

OCIC Executive Director Tony Trinh, whose family owns Phuong Jewelry, said that, in addition to deploying community ambassadors and volunteers to assist in non-violent situations, he supports increasing funding for the police department and having more officers in the neighborhood.

“Ambassadors can help. Patrols can help. But when there are guns involved, and when people are getting robbed, who do you call first? You have to call 911,” Trinh said. “My view is that if we have fewer police officers, then more crime is going to happen.”

OCIC President Stewart Chen runs a chiropractic practice across the street from Wilma Chan Park. In March, he said, two of his clients were waiting for their appointments inside their parked cars when a group of people smashed their car windows, stole their belongings and drove off.

Still, he said, Chinatown feels safer than it did three years ago, attributing it in part to OPD assigning a permanent liaison officer, Officer Wesley Huynh, to the area.

“This is a slow-moving process, and I understand things take time,” Chen said. “But there are a lot of positive initiatives and policies in the pipeline that I’m excited to see.”

Changing a mindset of ‘scarcity, distrust and fear’

Even in Oakland Chinatown business circles, there are dissenters from the consensus around policing. In 2022, Oakland resident Seanathan Chow founded Sticky Rice Club, a nonprofit that aims to strengthen Chinatown’s business community through events and programs. He said the mindset of “scarcity, distrust and fear” that has dominated public discourse surrounding Oakland Chinatown is counterproductive.

“Neighborhoods that are overpoliced aren’t seen as safe,” he said. “So people are like, ‘Come to Chinatown, but also be terrified of it.’”

Denise Huynh has owned Tay Ho, a Vietnamese restaurant located on the edge of Chinatown, for nearly 14 years. She recounted an incident last year in which a man entered her restaurant and was combative toward her, her staff and customers, “screaming and getting in my face,” she said.

Huynh called Sakhone Lasaphangthong, a community ambassador at the time with the nonprofit Family Bridges, who spoke to the man and helped de-escalate the situation. While Lasaphangthong arrived at Tay Ho “a few minutes” after her call, Huynh said it took OPD more than four hours to respond, even though OPD’s headquarters are roughly three blocks away from her restaurant.

“If that guy had a knife, I would’ve been dead,” Huynh said.

Since then, Huynh has relied more on community ambassadors and mediators than OPD. “I want my [money] to go to these guys to help [ambassador] programs,” she said, “because they were there when nobody else was.”

Since the early days of the pandemic, many Chinatown businesses have closed their doors by 4 p.m. due to concerns about crimes happening close to sunset. To help boost foot traffic in the late afternoons and early evenings, City Council President and District 2 Councilmember Nikki Fortunato Bas said the city of Oakland is supporting more afternoon and evening events in Chinatown through its Activate Oakland grant program, such as Lincoln Summer Nights, which brings out families and neighbors to Lincoln Square Park with performances, games and other entertainment.

“Where I think we could just really focus and grow is coordinating with the business community to get people to stay out later, maybe going block by block, to activate certain parts of Chinatown to stay open later,” Bas said.

Last Saturday, hundreds of community members crowded Chinatown’s streets for the inaugural Oakland Chinatown Night Market, another Activate Oakland-funded event. Organized by OCIC, the family-friendly market featured live music by Asian American artists, a basketball tournament, a “dumpling Olympics” tasting event, an art gallery and food vendors.

A shift among elders in the ‘mentality of public safety’

Earlier this year, Zhu found herself inside the Black Panther Party Mini Museum, housed in a Victorian home in West Oakland. Zhu had joined a small pilot program for working-class Chinese American and Chinese immigrant elders called the Oakland Chinatown Coalition Community Safety Education Series.

“I hoped to learn how to change our environment for the safety of our community,” she said.

Organized by the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Asian Health Services, East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation and Asian Immigrant Women Advocates, the program sought to educate elders on the root causes of crime. There were interactive workshops on the history of Chinatowns and racialized violence in the U.S., visits with incarcerated men at San Quentin State Prison, and discussions on racial justice and community-led safety initiatives. The elders visited the West Oakland Black Panther Party mural, which depicts the women who were at the forefront of the political organization. They learned about the history of the movement and toured the West Oakland Health Center (recently renamed Baywell Health), a community health clinic that serves a predominantly Black population. Zhu said she “really admired” the programs they had to bring Chinese seniors and community members together.

(A documentary called “Love Has Two Meanings” followed the 12 participants throughout the program. Directed by Kevin Duncan Wong, the short film premiered on Aug. 3 at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, followed by a moderated panel discussion about the elders’ experiences.)

The message of the series — that the safety of Asian Americans was connected to the well-being of all racialized people in the U.S. — was an implicit rebuke to the racist “Black-on-Asian crime” narratives that tend to dominate the discussion of anti-Asian violence.

The program reflects a shift among elders in the “mentality of public safety,” said Kenneth Tang, an organizing director at APEN. Tang works with several hundred elders in Oakland Chinatown as part of the group’s community advocacy and leadership program; they’re among the most involved community members in Chinatown, with some testifying in Sacramento on state policies for health and environmental safety issues.

Among several elders in Chinatown, Tang said, the conversation has moved recently to focus more on mental health and the systemic causes of crime. That conception of public safety isn’t new. Three years ago, many community members took issue with the prevailing hate narrative. APEN and other groups argued that increased police presence and surveillance did not always lead to more safety. They also felt the sentiment divided Asian Americans and Black people at a time when both communities ought to collaborate on public safety solutions; after all, the same surveys that identified a spike in anti-Asian hate crimes at the start of the pandemic also consistently showed that Black Americans were much more likely to be targeted.

As is often noted, the East Bay was once the site of linked struggle between Asian and Black Americans. It was the Black Power Movement that partly inspired two UC Berkeley graduate students in 1968 to coin the phrase “Asian American,” attempting to bring together a diverse coalition of people under a single political identity across ethnic, national and class lines. The group they founded, the Asian American Political Alliance, developed close ties with Oakland’s Black Panther Party and joined up with the Black Student Union and other organizations to form the Third World Liberation Front. The Third World Liberation Front initiated one of the longest student strikes in U.S. history and brought about the creation of the country’s first ethnic studies departments, at San Francisco State and UC Berkeley.

While it may be true that the Black–Asian solidarity of the Third World Liberation Front era is more commemorated than practiced, the history remains a potent reminder of different political possibilities. In the early period of the pandemic, it was summoned locally to push back against what the sociologist Tamara Nopper has said were racist political agendas “being marshaled through the anti-Asian violence conversations.”

“We want to build an understanding of violence beyond just ‘anti-hate’ work,” said Ben Wang, director of special initiatives at Asian Health Services, a community health clinic in Oakland Chinatown that helped organize the Community Safety Education Series.

The narrow focus on anti-Asian hate “does not always reflect the experiences of our clients,” Wang said. “A large number of Asian seniors are impacted by violence. Through our work on the ground, we also know seniors in other communities are experiencing similar forms of violence, crime and trauma. Everyone deserves to feel safe in Oakland, whether they are Asian, Black, Latino, young or elderly.”

Wang added that the hate-crime lens and law enforcement definition may be too narrow from a public health approach. “There are societal and health factors related to the pandemic, lack of affordable housing, mental health crisis, soaring economic inequality, public education gaps and closing schools, poor literacy races, and racial disparities,” he said. “The number of homeless OUSD students is at a horrifying level. All of these factors create the landscape that leads to crime and violence.”

In the fall of 2021, Asian Health Services launched the Community Healing Unit, a program to support Asian victims of crimes. Though the impetus for establishing the program was a concern about hate crimes, the Community Healing Unit also serves people who have been impacted by homicide, gun violence, gender-based violence and other forms of violence. Support includes access to therapy, acupuncture, yoga, massage therapy and free food delivery.

Many Asian victims were not getting access to victims’ support services, in part due to language and other barriers. A key component of the Community Healing Unit, Wang said, is training existing bilingual health care workers in a lay counseling program because of a shortage of bilingual therapists.

Another community-driven response to crime is the Chinatown ambassadors program. Sakhone Lasaphangthong started as a volunteer in Chinatown, picking up trash and keeping the neighborhood clean. He was newly out of prison and wanted to give back to the community.

Today, he leads a team of community mediators — formerly called “community ambassadors” when the program was run through the Asian Prisoner Support Committee, an Oakland-based grassroots organization providing services to incarcerated Asian Americans.

The mediators program is now part of Family Bridges, a Chinatown-based nonprofit that primarily serves seniors, low-income people and people experiencing homelessness. The city of Oakland granted $30,000 to Family Bridges to kickstart the program, and the nonprofit received a $3.5 million state grant in February to expand the mediator program in Chinatown and other parts of Oakland later this year. Family Bridges also manages the Oak Street Community Cabins, tiny homes built to temporarily house people near a freeway underpass on the outskirts of Chinatown.

Lasaphangthong wakes up before dawn almost daily to walk around Oakland Chinatown. He helps train a team of mediators who talk to homeless people, merchants, residents and other people in need. Most of the mediators are Asian American and formerly incarcerated, and some are also formerly houseless.

On one weekday morning in April, a small group of mediators checked in on an unhoused man on the sidewalk in Chinatown. In the past, the group of mediators had asked him to move his belongings from the front of a store, and he complied.

Lasaphangthong said that his work is getting to know everyone — including people who don’t have homes — so that there can be more understanding and less conflict. Sometimes he has to mediate when crimes or near crimes occur, such as the incident at Tay Ho. But often the job is simply to form relationships within the community. He helps unhoused people get their IDs and other documents so they can receive benefits, with the ultimate goal of finding jobs and permanent housing.

“We are just trying to be the glue to bring the community together, to work together for a better and safer environment for everyone,” he said.

Heidi Wong, director of Family Bridges, said having mediators on the streets building relationships is key to a more harmonious community. “A lot of incidents are relating to people not understanding each other, to bias awareness and to mediating escalation of tempers,” she said.

In addition to mediators, organized volunteer groups sprouted as a response to rising crime three years ago. They are still active today and can be seen patrolling in large groups wearing bright vests as part of the Toishan Benevolent Association and the Blue Angel Volunteer Patrol Team. Community members say these groups all play a role in bringing a sense of safety to Chinatown.

A visit to San Quentin

As part of the Community Safety Education Series, Zhu and fellow Chinese elders visited San Quentin State Prison in March. There, she met two Asian American men who were incarcerated; one of them grew up in Oakland Chinatown. She said she felt an immediate connection with these men, who spent most of their adult lives behind bars. She heard stories that day about traumatic childhoods and the lack of care and attention that incarcerated people received from their parents, and her heart ached.

“You can get love from family or society,” she said. “If they can’t find it in family, then they will look in society. If society doesn’t give that nurturing, then they will find it somewhere else. If we can discover the issues earlier and change their paths, they won’t end up in prison.”

After the men in San Quentin shared their experiences, the Chinese seniors visiting that day stood up and shared words of hope. They even decided among themselves to write letters to the incarcerated men as part of a letter exchange program.

“I am writing to send you some warmth and encouragement,” an elder wrote in Chinese, later translated to English, to one of the men they met in San Quentin. “By reexamining your outlook on life and values, you will certainly be able to find new directions and goals. There are many caring community members, like me, who are eagerly awaiting your return to normal life.”

Wang, who is part of the exchange program, said the letters encouraged the men in prison “to continue improving themselves, telling them they see their promise and hard work they’ve done in prison. Multiple seniors said, ‘We welcome you back home.’”

The elders, Wang said, had come to see their community as something bigger than Oakland Chinatown — something big enough to include even the people locked up in a state prison.

The night of the visit to San Quentin, Zhu said she was so moved by her experience that she couldn’t sleep.

Moving beyond policing

Over the years, Stop AAPI Hate has shifted its focus to a more nuanced picture of public safety and systemic racism. In June, Russell Jeung, one of the founders of Stop AAPI Hate, told the San Francisco Examiner that politicians who have used the movement to justify the overpolicing and overcriminalization of racially diverse neighborhoods are mistaken.

“A lot of public safety efforts are Band-Aids, where you try to arrest people after the crime has already been committed,” Jeung told the Examiner. “If you understand the source of the problems, then you could tackle the roots so that it doesn’t prevent it before it occurs in the first place … So for me, preventative models are just better public policy.”

Several people interviewed for this story likewise said the emphasis should not be on increasing police or surveillance but on other types of community safety, such as funding ambassadors and mediators, increasing foot traffic and organizing more events and activities for elders and families.

Zhu said she still goes outside, just like before. She usually doesn’t go outside after 3 or 4 p.m., when most Chinatown businesses are closed, a lingering effect of the pandemic. Zhu said she has noticed more officers and police cars in Chinatown since 2021, but she also doesn’t think there’s been much change — since crimes are still occurring.

“Police’s strength is after something happens, they can arrest people,” she said. “I think we need to rely on everyone in society, the whole community, to help with safety.”

But she and other seniors have a renewed sense of purpose. They see preventing crime and addressing root causes — rather than enforcing laws and punishing people — as a proactive and more powerful way to address public safety. “The seniors shared so much about the need for better housing, better jobs and addressing the mental health crisis,” said Wang of Asian Health Services.

A group of APEN seniors also visited Bas during one of her office hours in Chinatown earlier this year. In previous years, they would have asked more about police and crime reports. This time, they advocated for more mental health support, housing and other vital services for people in need.

“If everybody has a place to live, if everybody has their basic needs met and gets services they need, that’s what makes them feel safe,” said Tang of APEN, who was at the office hour and served as an interpreter. “This is what community looks like.”

Bas herself has long advocated for multiple strategies to address safety, including ambassadors and other community-driven programs. Police, she believes, are just one piece of the puzzle. “Our approach to public safety is holistic,” Bas said.

Now Zhu believes community members and city leaders should focus more on improving schools and support for youth. She also hopes there will be more programs to support formerly incarcerated people. She wants them to have housing and job opportunities when they return to their communities — something to catch them from falling back into the sort of desperate situations that lead people to commit crimes in the first place.

“If we can find the root of the problem and help them,” Zhu said, “then we wouldn’t have to destroy their young lives.”