Juvian Rodriguez is transported from the Midtown South Precinct on April 9, 2021. Roriguez is in custody after allegedly threatening a police officer posing as a decoy for anti-Asian hate crime in Penn Station.
 

On April 9th at Penn Station, New York, 35-year-old Juvian Rodriguez was arrested for harassment as a hate crime against Asian Americans and criminal possession of a controlled substance.

An Asian New York Police Department officer went undercover, acting as a decoy to help stop these hate crimes. Fortunately--or maybe, unfortunately-- the bait worked. As he approached an escalator near 7th Avenue and 32nd Street, Rodriguez started harassing the officer and “shouting anti-Asian statements.”

According to WABC, Rodriguez told the officer to "go back to China before you end up in the graveyard," and threatened to stab the officer in the face. Adding insult to injury, a crack pipe was found on his body after being detained. Rodriguez has been released but placed under supervision by the NYPD. He is scheduled to go back to court in May.

This is the second arrest by the new team of undercover officers part of the NYPD in just two weeks. Many more arrests are expected to soon follow, as the NYPD recently announced it was adding undercover officers and increasing patrols to prevent crimes in areas with large Asian-American populations.

Hate crimes against Asian Americans have been increasing over the past few years, especially with the outbreak of COVID-19’s suspected origins being in Wuhan, China. In just this past year, more than 3,795 hate incidents against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have been reported.

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said during a March 25 press conference that "[t]he next person you target, whether it's through speech, menacing activity or anything else, walking along a sidewalk or on a train platform, may be a plainclothes New York City police officer. So think twice.”

By Connor Ku