Sheriff, DA town hall focuses on south Sacramento crime targeting AAPI community
SACRAMENTO -- Sacramento Sheriff Jim Cooper and District Attorney Thien Ho held a town hall meeting in south Sacramento on Thursday to confront fears that criminals are targeting Asian communities in the area.
The town hall was focused on robberies around Florin Road and Stockton Boulevard, where 40 percent of robberies in the area happen.
Sheriff's deputies showed a series of surveillance videos of women being attacked. In a May robbery, a surveillance video showed a woman targeted in a Stockton Boulevard parking lot — the robbers ripping her cell phone and wallet from her hands; she then fell to the ground as the suspects sped away.
The suspects, an adult and a juvenile, were identified and arrested.
Ho, the Sacramento County District Attorney, spoke about perceptions criminals may have when targeting the AAPI community.
"There's a perception that we don't call police," Ho said. "There's a perception that we won't work with the government. There's a perception that we carry cash on us."
Ho called for changing perceptions — and asked AAPI community members to speak up against crime.
"What I see here, just the turnout, as I look out is a community that says 'enough is enough,'" Ho said.
Nikki Nguyen is a Little Saigon business owner who says she has changed her habits while running errands along Stockton Boulevard.
"It hurts the businesses a lot because people stop shopping because they're afraid," Nguyen said.
"These crimes are violent, they're vicious when they occur, but the incidents are highly publicized -- which is good [because] it helps us catch these individuals," Sheriff Cooper said.
Cooper said deputies have made 100 robbery arrests along the business boulevards in the past year-and-a-half, and that robberies are on pace to drop this year.
Thursday's town hall sent a message of vigilance amidst concerns of violence, in an effort to calm stubborn feelings of fear.
Sheriff Cooper says he has added more patrols in these business corridors recently, and they won't go away even as the stats show a decrease in crime.
