By Lori Lee
NDG Contributing Writer
On January 28, 2021, Vicha Ratanapakdee was taking his daily walk in his San Francisco neighborhood when a man ran across the street and pushed him to the ground. After suffering head trauma, Ratanapakee remained unconscious and died in the hospital two days later, his daughter Monthanus Ratanapakdee explained in an August 2024 briefing hosted by Ethnic Media Services.
The attack, a vivid expression of one American’s hate, came during the pandemic, when many Asian Americans were suffering abuse. The death of the Thai immigrant caused public outrage among many other Americans, prompting artists to paint murals and portraits of the elderly man, and spurring anti-hate activism, CNN reported.
The suspect has been held in county jail for three years now, as his family continues to fight for justice. Though prosecutors offered a plea deal, the family is pushing toward trial, though murder cases can take up to ten years in San Francisco. “Justice doesn’t always come easy,” said Ratanapakdee. “People have to be willing to fight for it.”
The City of San Francisco honored the victim by naming a street after him in his Anza Vista neighborhood, and the family has established a foundation for him.
His family wants to warn the next generation so they can help their families, his daughter said, and they want to help people understand the disrespect that persists for immigrants in this country.
“We don’t want this to happen to our elderly, she said. “We don’t want to see this violence in our society.”
The family hopes their activism will encourage people to speak out and to report hate crimes despite their fears. Ratanapakdee understands the fear of standing up against such criminals because she too was afraid to speak up in the beginning, she said. She credits the San Francisco D.A.’s office for helping her get past that fear.
She also brings attention to the 2021 federal Bipartisan hate crime legislation that made online reporting available in multiple languages and Marsy’s Law, adopted in twelve states, which supports victims and families as bail and release conditions are set.
About half of hate crimes go unreported, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey. And before these crimes can go to trial, they must first be reported to law enforcement, The Center for Public Integrity reports.
A lack of confidence in the police is one reason for the lack of reporting, an attitude that is often prevalent in marginalized communities. According to Brendan Lantz, an associate professor at Florida State University, Black victims are disproportionately denied compensation in many states, often due to implicit bias.
This history does not encourage the Black community to speak out against hate crimes.
One problem is law enforcement tends to lack the training it needs to properly document and investigate crimes of hate, The Center for Public Integrity reports. And since hate crimes often fall on immigrant communities, fear of revealing citizenship status is a primary factor.
Major cities have seen steep increases in hate crimes over recent years, Chicago in 2023 experiencing a 43% increase, in San Diego, a 47% rise, and in Houston, a shocking 193% spike.
Anti-immigrant rhetoric by Texas political leaders, including Gov. Greg Abbott, has played a role, The Texas Tribune citing Abbott’s reference to immigrant invaders prior to the 2019 shooting that killed 22 people at an El Paso Walmart. Vowing to stop the language after the shooting, the governor has since resumed his extremist rhetoric, the Tribune reports.
The Texas surge in hate crimes brings attention to recent white-supremacist and antisemitic activities in Texas, including training, rallies, and the formation of a white supremacist group, Patriot Front, in the Dallas area, The Texas Tribune reports, citing a 2023 report by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
Texas, also home to churches, like Stedfast Baptist in the Dallas area, is linked to the New Independent Fundamental Baptist movement, which uses extreme, sometimes violent, language against the LGBTQ community, the ADL cited.
As heinous as they can be, hate crimes can be difficult to prosecute due mainly to insufficient evidence. The U.S. Department of Justice reports about 82% of recent hate crimes have not been charged.
Erin West, a prosecutor for Santa Clara County, explains, their office takes the cases very seriously, with procedures which call for a minimum of two investigators per case and where disagreement is found, a third person being brought in. The team evaluates the motivation behind its crimes and tries to determine whether bias was present or played a substantial role. Proving bias or hate as a motivation can be difficult, especially in the absence of hate speech.
Proving how a person was thinking without visible evidence can be tricky, said West, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
As the first county in the nation to respond to Asian hate crime victims during the pandemic, West said they found Asian female victims were being targeted with purse snatchings because they were believed to be easy targets who carry a lot of money. The County understood that as bias, said West, and hate charges were successfully convicted in many cases.
West said she understands how it would be excruciating to continue to live in a neighborhood where a hate crime went unprosecuted.
Hate crimes reverberate through the community in a way that other crimes do not, explains Florida State professor Lantz, causing community members to experience a lack of safety when hearing about crimes against their own people. Therefore, bringing that extra hate crime charge can be particularly meaningful to marginalized communities, he said.
