Chinese speaking police officers to be deployed to patrol San Bruno Avenue corridor for fighting daily anti-Asian violence & harassment

(SAN FRANCISCO) There has been no secret for over a decade that San Bruno Avenue business corridor in the Portola neighborhood is one of the high crime areas in San Francisco for anti-Asian hate incidents and violence. While 64% of the residents in Portola are Asians, they face daily challenges of racial harassment, especially after school hours.

Wan Chen Jiang, 70-year-old Chinese medicine doctor who has practiced in Portola for decades, has been no different from other Asian merchants to face those daily racially-related harassment at their storefronts for many years.

Jiang described that the routine harassment mostly occurred after school hours in the afternoon in which groups of young people or students would throw fruits, garbage, or small-size objects into the stores when they passed by. Sometimes the objects thrown into the stores would hit the merchants or customers.

Sometimes the objects or news racks on the sidewalks would be kicked by mostly young people to the ground where like newspapers were scattered around.

In one incident, young people walked into Jiang's Chinese herb store and threw all his herb buckets on the countertop to the floor.

On May 15, a mid-aged African American man walked into Jiang's store at around 10am in the morning and yelled loudly. At that time Jiang was behind the counter putting together the herbs prescribed for his patient. In the meantime, a total of 5 to 6 older-aged friends and patients were sitting inside the herb store.

Jiang, his friends and patients are monolingual immigrants. They did not understand what the African American man yelled for. "Honestly, we get used to this type of harassment along San Bruno Avenue. That was why none of us would do anything to respond," said Jiang.

Then subsequently the suspect walked out the store and returned with a hammer in his hand. The suspect hit the store window with the hammer in front of Jiang and his friends and patients. Once the glass window was smashed, the suspect fled.

Jiang and his friends did not call 911 immediately. They believed the Police Department would not take any actions since no one was hurt and no money was taken.

In the afternoon around 3:30pm on the same day, May 15, a Wind Newspaper reporter was in the area and saw the window smashed. The reporter was able to convince Jiang to call 911.

Jiang, who does not understand English, asked his daughter to come by to call 911 for him. They made the call at about 4:15pm and waited for the police officers to respond.

Jiang and his daughter left the store at 6pm without seeing any officers. On the next day, May 16, they still did not see the officers responding.

On May 17, two days after the incident, Jiang's daughter called 911 the second time for the same incident, a police officer came to the herb store within an hour.

San Bruno Avenue serves as the largest business corridor for both the Portola and Visitacion Valley neighborhoods in which their demographics are in common with Asians as the largest ethnic group.

According to the data released by Niche, Asians have made up 64% of Portola's population, Hispanic 19%, White 12% and African Americans 3%. While Asians represent 61% of Visitacion Valley's total population, Hispanic comes second with 18%, White 10%, African American 7%.

Merchants and residents on San Bruno Avenue like to see more police officers patrolling their neighborhood. There were Chinese speaking foot beat officers patrolling the area prior to the pandemic. But the program ended since the pandemic.

The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) responded to Wind Newspaper’s inquiry with more details on Jiang's incident.

On May 15 at approximately 7:00 pm, officers responded to Jiang's herb store for a report of vandalism, SFPD said. Officers arrived on scene and observed the business closed and no one to meet regarding the incident.

On May 17 at approximately 10:27 am, officers responded to the same location regarding the report of vandalism. SFPD said officers gathered evidence at the scene during the investigation. The investigation remains open, and no arrest has been made yet at the time.

Since Jiang and his daughter called 911 after some time without imminent danger or the crime was not in progress, the call was put as "C" priority instead of "A" which required immediate responses from officers.

SFPD said the department's response time for calls has been decreasing in the last few months. They would continue to work with victims to document crimes and to ultimately hold those accountable for their actions.

The data provided by SFPD showed that the median response time for a "C" priority call was 89.05 minutes (almost 1.5 hours) in May 2024, 84.89 minutes in April 2024, 83.28 minutes in March 2024. It was 115.23 minutes in October 2023 and 120.18 minutes in June 2023.

The median response time for a "B" priority call was 29.58 minutes in May 2024, 28.43 minutes in April 2024, 29.38 minutes in March 2024. It was 34.52 minutes in June 2023.

The median response time for a top priority ("A") call was 8.52 minutes in May 2024, 8.66 minutes in April 2024, and 8.93 minutes in June 2023.

SFPD encourages Jiang and community members to call the police as soon as possible when a crime occurs.

"The most important thing is for them to report incidents quickly and give good descriptions of the subjects," said Deputy Police Chief Julian Ng who is in charge of field operations covering all police stations in the city.

Ng said merchants should also call the police if any harassment occurs at their storefront. "If emergency, call 911, for non-emergency 415-553-0123," Ng said.

SFPD is planning to bring back the foot beat program to the San Bruno Avenue corridor. Ng said he had spoken to Bayview Police Station Captain working on having a full time Chinese speaking officer dedicated to the San Bruno Avenue foot beat patrol.

"For now, Bayview Station is bringing in a couple Chinese speaking officers on an overtime basis. Mostly during the later and closing times to check in with merchants," said Ng. "I’m hopeful that we will have someone identified shortly."