Empire Strikes Back (long, but fascinating read)

Mirror https://archive.ph/vmlgs

Reddit reacts https://old.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/xop8lz/asian_america_learns_how_to_hit_back/

Chin had been feeling cautious even before Lee was murdered. He told me a story about how, in late January, he had encountered an unhoused man who he said was defacing a mural outside his building. “I was chasing him off. He turns around, and he was like, ‘Frick you, chink.’ And then pulls out a can of pepper spray and sprays me right in the eyes,” he said. “That shit burned — I was just a roaring man. He seemed terrified, like, Oh God, it’s not working. At that point, I chased him down in the subway and then shot him in the back of the neck with a taser.”

I was taken aback. “Wait, so do you carry a taser around with you?” I said.

“Oh yeah. Absolutely,” said Chin. “I actually recommend you carry one as well.” The man fell down the stairs when Chin tased him before running off. According to Chin, there happened to be a couple of NYPD officers in the station: “They said they couldn’t find him. He escaped into the subway.”

Chin characterized this incident — the man calling him a chink and hitting him with the pepper spray — as a hate crime. “Everyone’s terrified out of their minds now because we’re seeing stuff like this,” he said. “I think the collective sense is that criminals are being protected more than citizens at the moment.” Lee’s murder served to galvanize that conviction