New York City, which has seen more cases of the Chinese coronavirus than any other area in the entire country, has announced the formation of a task force focusing specifically on alleged hate crimes against Asians due to the coronavirus, as reported by the Daily Caller.
The task force is run by New York’s Commission on Human Rights, and will coordinate with the New York Police Department’s Hate Crime Task Force if any accusations or incidents are determined to constitute a so-called “hate crime.”
Deputy commissioner of the commission’s law enforcement bureau Sapna Raj said in a statement that “we saw that we had so many inquiries coming in after this pandemic started,” and that the task force was formed in order to “respond rapidly to unique issues that New Yorkers were facing.”
The Human Rights Commission claimed that it has received just over 200 such complaints of alleged discrimination based on the coronavirus since February, with about 100 of those cases referring specifically to Asians.
Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director of the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, admitted that “the numbers are small overall,” but nevertheless claimed, without evidence, that New York City is “an indication of what we’re seeing across the country.”