San Francisco police will soon deploy 32 officers to foot-beat patrols around transit stops in the Bayview and Visitacion Valley in the aftermath of attacks near Muni lines that have victimized Asian Americans, the police chief George Gason said Wednesday April 28.
Chief George Gascn said the added officers will be deployed starting this week and remain in the area for at least a month.
On Jan. 24, five young men attacked 83-year-old Huan Chen at the T-Third stop at Third Street and Oakdale Avenue. Chen died two months later at a hospital.
In March, a 57-year-old Asian American woman was thrown to the ground from a Muni platform in the same area. She was injured but is recovering.
On April 17, an Asian American man driving a 9-San Bruno Muni bus was punched and kicked by as many as five youths after he confronted them vandalizing the coach at Somerset Street and San Bruno Avenue. The driver was hospitalized. Three juveniles were arrested and charged with assault, and two others were cited and released.
Four of the five suspects in the attack this month on the bus driver are Latino, and the fifth is black. (Source: Jaxon Van Derbeken, San Francisco Chronicle, Apr 29, 2010).