A woman who allegedly made anti-Asian remarks and pepper-sprayed four people in New York City last weekend was arrested and charged with hate crimes, 警方周五表示.
玛德琳·巴克, 47, was charged with two counts of assault as a hate crime, two counts of attempted assault as a hate crime and four counts of harassment as a hate crime, 纽约警察局说.
CNN was not immediately able to identify an attorney for Barker, who is from Merritt Island, 佛罗里达, 根据纽约警察局. CNN reached out to the Legal Aid Society to determine whether it’s representing her.
攻击, which was investigated by the NYPD Hate Crime Task Force, happened June 11 in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District and was partially caught on video.
该视频 released by police showed a woman brandishing what appeared to be pepper-spray. The woman then proceeded to pepper-spray four women during the altercation, 纽约警察局说. The women refused medical attention, according to an earlier news release from police.
At some point during the altercation, not captured in the video that the NYPD released, an unidentified Asian man passed the group on the sidewalk, NYPD Sergeant Anwar Ishmael told CNN. The woman allegedly turned to him and said, “You take all your b***hes back to where you came from,” Ishmael said.
最终, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office will determine what charges Barker will face.
Hate crimes, including those against Asians in the US, have seen a sharp increase in recent years. The Covid-19 pandemic sparked attacks against Asians amid online and political rhetoric stigmatizing them, but this category of hate crime is often underreported.
Between March 31, 2021, and March 31, 2022, 110 的 577 hate crime incidents targeted Asians, 根据 NYPD Hate Crimes Dashboard. 三月 2022 单独, there were nine incidents treated as hate crimes targeting Asian Americans, with five arrests.
And despite the concerning increase in such crimes, a small percentage of reported attacks against Asians end up in convictions.
一个 报告 from the Asian American Bar Association of New York found that of the 233 reported attacks against Asian Americans in New York City in the first three quarters of 2021, seven led to hate crime convictions as of late May.
