Thai Lives Matter

It turns out that, following my previous notes on the matter, Asian-American lives in San Francisco continue to be rudely shortened:

Police in San Francisco arrested a 19-year-old Daly City man on suspicion of murder for a brazen attack last week on an 84-year-old man in the city’s Anza Vista neighborhood, officials said Sunday.
[...]
The victim was identified by family members as Vicha Ratanapakdee, a native of Thailand who lived in San Francisco.

I've seen the uncensored security video of the incident. It does not make for comfortable viewing. The thug barrels across the road, slams into Mr Ratanapakdee from the side, knocking him hard into the ground and then just lopes away casually. He clearly didn't care whether his victim lived or died. Unsurprisingly it was the latter, but took two days to happen.

Mr Ratanapakdee was 84 years old, and apparently legally blind. The notion that he was any kind of threat - or was even really aware of his assailant before the attack - is ridiculous. The alleged assailant, Mr Antoine Watson, is of course of the same ethnic persuasion as that described in my previously linked stories of elder abuse and grievous harm in peaceful San Francisco.

Even San Francisco's notoriously lax DA has been forced to take this attack seriously, and - should Mr Watson indeed be convicted of the crimes charged - he can expect a good long stint in jail. But the fact that he even attempted this is a recurring reminder of the threat to San Francisco's elderly Asian community that a certain section of its black community poses. Does the city government really think they are going to continue to take this lying down? Sooner or later, something is going to snap. And when the city doesn't show any inclination to protect elderly Asians, their younger relatives are going to find a dai lo who will.

Update: Feb 16th 2021 - a robbery outside a liquor store in Chinatown, Oakland results in a young woman being robbed of her expensive camera, and the liquor store owner being charged with felony assault with a firearm when he tried to intervene. While I'm sure that firing four shots (with, presumably, zero hits) was not the minimal-violence reaction, can you imagine how this is going to play in Chinatown?

The chief [of police]'s message was that Oakland should come together as a community, but that people should not put one another in harm's way.

Sorry Chief, I think that ship has sailed. One small part of the black community is already putting a large part of the Asian community in harm's way. When the Asian community fights back, they're arrested. And Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong is black. It doesn't matter how upright and righteous he is, this is going to appear - unfairly - as the black police chief covering for black criminals.