Oakland’s Chinese Community Asks Newsom to Declare ‘State of Emergency’ on Crime

Carl Chan, president of the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, called on Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) to declare a “state of emergency” on the crime wave in the city on Tuesday, after a series of assaults and robberies in Chinatown.

Newsom has condemned anti-Asian hate crimes, and his most recent budget included a $156 million “Asian Pacific Islander Equity budget,” most of which will go to organizations in the local Asian American community.

But Newsom has also championed “criminal justice reform” measures that, critics contend, are fueling a statewide crime wave, accompanied by left-wing’ efforts to criticize police as racist, and to “defund the police” in major cities.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported:

In a letter, Carl Chan urged the governor to declare the emergency and to send California Highway Patrol and other state law enforcement authorities to Oakland.

“I’m not only asking you to patrol in Chinatown. All areas, we need your help,” Chan said at a news conference in Oakland’s Chinatown.

…

Some Oakland Chinatown merchants have already turned to armed private security guards in response to unease over violence and robberies in the neighborhood.

Homicides spiked to 78 as of Aug. 8, compared with 54 by the same date last year and 49 by that date in 2019, police data shows. The numbers of assaults with a firearm and carjackings were roughly double the mid-2019 tally, although robberies of all categories were on par with pre-pandemic numbers.

Oakland Police Department Chief LeRonne Armstrong recently blasted the city council for cutting $18 million from the police budget in the midst of the crime wave.

Crime has become a major issue in the ongoing recall election against Newsom, which will be held Sep. 14.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new e-book, We Told You So!: The First 100 Days of Joe Biden’s Radical Presidency. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.