A New York City man was arrested and charged with hate crimes after allegedly hurling anti-Asian abuse and threats at an undercover co...
A New York City man was arrested and charged with hate crimes after allegedly hurling anti-Asian abuse and threats at an undercover cop.
Police say Juvian Rodriguez, 35, unwittingly targeted a member of the NYPD's Asian Hate Crime Task Force on patrol in Midtown Manhattan on Friday afternoon.
Rodriguez, an ex-convict, approached the plainclothes officer outside Madison Square Garden on 33rd Street, and allegedly began spewing hate speech and threats.
'Go back to China before you wind up in the f***ing graveyard!', he said, the New York Post reported.
A police source said Rodriguez also allegedly told the cop: 'I'm going to slap the holy piss out of you and stab you in the face.'
The officer, who was not identified, alerted the precinct and subsequently arrested the man.
Rodriguez, who is reported to have had a number of brushes with the law in the past, was charged with menacing and harassment - as hate crimes - as well as drug possession.
The ex-convict unwittingly targeted an undercover officer from NYPD's Asian Hate Crime Task Force, police said
Rodriguez is accused of threatening to stab the officer and telling him to 'go back to China'
He allegedly remained defiant even after he was busted, telling cops: 'I don't give a f***k if I go to jail,' the Post reported.
When asked to comment by reporters outside the precinct, Rodriguez reportedly shouted: 'Your mother!'
His arrest comes amid a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes in the city.
The NYPD last month announced it was deploying plainclothes officers as part of their Asian Hate Crime Task Force to help tackle the recent uptick.
The department reports that New York City alone has at least 35 anti-Asian hate crime reports since January, compared to the 28 in all of 2020.
Since the coronavirus shutdown in the US last march, a report from Stop AAPI Hate has documented at least 3,795 racially motivated attacks against Asian Americans in the last year alone.
Raised awareness of anti-Asian hate crimes in the US has led to the popular 'Stop Asian Hate' movement online and in rallies across the nation
Raised awareness of anti-Asian hate crimes in the US has led to the popular 'Stop Asian Hate' movement online and in rallies across the nation.
The movement gained traction after the high profile March shootings at three spas in Georgia, where a gunman killed eight people, including six Asian women.
Last week surveillance footage caught an elderly 65-year-old Asian woman viciously attacked by a stranger who hurled anti-Asian statements in a random attack in New York City.
In 2020 the United Nations brought attention to the issue, attributing 'alarming level' of racist attacks in the US due to COVID -19, the coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, China.
'Racially motivated violence and other incidents against Asian-Americans have reached an alarming level across the United States since the outbreak of COVID19' the report said.
The Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, reported that anti-Asian hate crimes in America's largest cities rose 149% in 2020, while overall hate crimes dropped seven percent.
The report found that the hugest surge was in New York, where anti-Asian hate crimes rose from just three in 2019 to 28 in 2020, a 833% increase.
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