No one has been detained in any of the cases.
The society where the salon was filmed is known as the Asian Trade Region and is located in the Korean Quarter of the city. It is home to a growing Asian-American population, and signs of Korean hairdressers and Korean barbecue shops can be seen on lively Royal Lane Street.
Americans of Asian descent and Pacific Islanders make up nearly 4 percent of Dallas’ population, or 48,278 people, according to the U.S. Census.
The Dallas Police Department has long had a unit made up of officials who speak languages, including Korean, Vietnamese and Tagalog, as part of efforts to address fears of crime in Asian neighborhoods. Despite these efforts, police said many crimes against Americans of Asian descent remain unreported.
Chief Garcia said on Friday that the department would increase patrols in the city’s Asian neighborhoods. “Hate has no place here,” he said.
Across the country, there has been an alarming wave of crime targeting Asian Americans at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, with 279 “addictive incidents” in 2020, up from 158 in 2019, according to FBI data.
An organization that collects data on biased crimes against Asian Americans, Stop AAPI Hate, said it had received 10,905 reports of hate attacks from March 2020 to the end of last year. Verbal harassment accounts for the majority of reported attacks, followed by physical attacks, according to the organization.
Elected officials around Dallas have said they are committed to supporting the city’s Asian community.
“The community of Southeast Asia and Asia in North Texas is growing and has great cultural and political significance, and I’m really saddened by anything that would make them feel like a persecuted demographer here,” said U.S. Sen. Nathan Johnson, a Democrat who represents ■ area.
The fact that a hair salon was targeted inspired initial comparisons to the high-profile murders in the Atlanta region last year, when a gunman went wild in three mineral springs and killed eight people, most of them of Asian descent. The suspect, Robert Aaron Long, 21 at the time, later told police he had visited similar massage parlors because he was “sexually addicted” and that he had shot to eliminate his “temptation.”
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