Asian-American Coalition Hits Van de Kamp’s Crime Report

Asian-American leaders on Thursday charged that state Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp’s report on organized crime foments racism by exaggerating Asian involvement in gang activity.

A coalition of Asian-American groups from across the state joined to rebuke the attorney general for last week’s report, which identified Asian gangs as a major organized crime movement on the rise.

“His narrowly focused press statement on Asian gangs was irresponsible and incomplete,” said Henry Der, director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, in a statement endorsed by 23 Asian-American associations.

“The report tends to apply a very simplistic label to a very complex problem,” said Michael Wong of the Asian Law Caucus, adding that it will “subject the Asian community to a lot of harassment and abuse.”

Steps Recommended

The leaders called on Van de Kamp to meet with Asian community leaders, create an Asian-American task force, hire more bilingual law enforcement personnel and educate the public about gang-related crime.

The leaders emphasized that they do not attribute the report to racism in the attorney general’s office, but said the report was sensationalist and insensitive.

Van de Kamp’s report, entitled “Organized Crime in California 1986,” asked for state and federal action to stem Asian gang activity, which the report said was responsible for murder, robbery, drug trafficking, gambling, extortion, prostitution and other crimes.

Van de Kamp said efforts to fight the problem will require the hiring of more Asian and bilingual law enforcement officers. He also commended the Asian community as overwhelmingly law-abiding.

“I don’t see we have such a serious threat as has been described in the news announcement by the attorney general,” said San Francisco Supervisor Tom Hsieh. “The answer is not blaming foreigners or those who look foreign. That is called discrimination.”