Asian Man Says NYC Cops Didn't Care He Was Spat On In Coronavirus-Related Incident

As anxiety over the spread of COVID-19 continues to mount in NYC, officials say there has been an alarming uptick in racist and xenophobic attacks on Asian-Americans. Councilmember Margaret Chin said earlier this week that misinformation and rumors have created "division, panic and hatred in our community," and that toxic dynamic played out yet again when one man was traveling through Penn Station earlier this week, only to be spit on, harassed and yelled at by a stranger.

"All I want is for people to just stop being racist towards Asians, and I hope that the New York community would embrace each other, and I wish that the media would help with the discrimination that the Asian communities face throughout the U.S.," said Abraham Choi.

Choi, 26, was commuting home to Suffolk County when he stopped in a bathroom at Penn Station around 7 p.m. on Wednesday. "I was minding my own business and I do not seem threatening at all—I am a typical Asian male who dresses like a typical worker in the IT/Gaming industry," Choi, who is Korean-American, said. There were a couple other people in the bathroom at the time, and Choi heard one man start to cough behind him.

"Then I heard a sound of spitting," he said. "Guess what? A glob of spit was on my head. I was shocked more than angry. I asked why? Why would he do that? He said, 'You Chinese fuck. All of you should die and all of you have the CHINESE virus.' I asked him why again, because I was shocked and I didn't really know what to do."

The man continued to berate me. "I just felt embarrassed and angry and disgusted," Choi said. "I washed my hair and my hands and my face because of the situation, it's just unsanitary. He kept cursing at me and walked out of the bathroom. I felt thankful cause I didn't get beat up, knifed, or shot. I still would be able to see my daughter and my wife."

Choi waited about 10 minutes in case the man was waiting for him outside, then approached an officer inside Penn Station (he's not sure if it was an NYPD officer or a transit cop) to try to report the incident. "According to the policeman I talked to, spitting and coughing on someone is NOT a crime," he said. "I asked why not, can't I do anything about it, I feel fucking violated? He said it was a grey area—the court or the department won't really do anything and just drop it. I took that as the truth and I truly believed the policeman's words. Like, why would I not believe a policeman?"

"He was absolutely assaulted," said Stan Mark, a senior staff attorney at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), who said the assault could be categorized as a violation or misdemeanor. There is precedent for it to warrant an aggravated harassment charge. "This particular man, and any victim of harassment or racial targeting, they need to report it to the police, and force police to report it as a hate crime and get it documented, so we have that data in order to dispel this idea and this false narrative that people believe [coronavirus] is a 'Chinese virus.'"

Mark stressed that on the larger scale, things could get much worse for people in the city's Asian-American community if politicians and officials don't help them get access to coronavirus testing—especially vulnerable people who are undocumented or have mixed-status families. "You're going to have people who go off the deep end and don't accept the medical [fact] that people from different countries can be carriers, and that view is gonna be promoted. And I feel very concerned that there's a spike, there is some testing available, and some groups of people may not want to be tested. Then the community will be scapegoated and targeted."

Immigrant advocates fear the Trump administration's policies may have scared undocumented immigrants from seeking services and help, even as public health experts say getting as many people as possible to seek medical help is the best tactic to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. "How do you give the undocumented and the vulnerable communities enough reassurance that they need to feel okay to trust a local government?" said Jo-Ann Yoo of the Asian American Federation, the New York-based umbrella group of more than 60 non-profits serving Asian communities. "To opt into (healthcare)...it requires people to raise their hand to say, 'I don't feel good. And I don't have papers.' People will have to make these tremendous leaps of faith."

Mark shares those concerns: "People will say, 'They're not even gonna get tested,' and if they are tested, people still think they have germs anyway, so politicians need to get ahead of this."

"People are looking to blame other people, it's a sad dynamic," he added. "And it's happened to the Chinese community in different eras."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has weighed in on the rise of anti-Asian racism on its tip sheet: "People of Asian descent, including Chinese Americans, are not more likely to get COVID-19 than any other American. Help stop fear by letting people know that being of Asian descent does not increase the chance of getting or spreading COVID-19."

Choi added that this isn't the first instance of COVID-19 related racism he's encountered in recent weeks. "Two weeks ago, some crazy dude coughed on me saying, 'You got the Corona now,' laughing and jumping," he said. Choi also said he's been pushing his office to work from home: "I was not feeling good [that day], since there were a lot of low-key racist remarks/actions made when I took the LIRR and the MTA subway already. If I sit on a seat, no one would sit next to me, except other Asians."

There have been multiple examples of Asian-Americans being harassed or attacked in response to the coronavirus pandemic that the NYPD are investigating as hate crimes. That includes an incident in which a woman punched another woman and yelled anti-Asian slurs at her in Midtown on Tuesday.

Now, Choi is worried about retaliation for speaking out: "I don't want to be doxxed or encounter racists who could or would love to target my family or my family's business—I am scared that I could get retaliation at work or online as well," he said. "I just don't understand why people have to be this way? Can't we just all get along? I just want to feel safe, is that too much to ask?"

Asked about the incident in Penn Station, and whether officers responded appropriately to Choi's complaint, an NYPD spokesperson said police have "nothing on file with the information you’ve provided."