Police Chief Sandra Spagnoli
Racial tensions in San Leandro don’t seem to be high enough for Police Chief Sandra Spagnoli. To fuel them, today the San Leandro Police Department issued a press release about a residential robbery, specifying that the suspects were two, young, black males and the victim was a Chinese family.
There is no legitimate reason for the race of the victims to be mentioned. Indeed, a quick look through other SLPD press releases on robberies and burglaries shows that while they always mention the race of the suspect, they never mention the race of the victim. There sole exception was a press release about two robberies perpetrated last April in which the perpetrators were described as black males and the victims as Asian females.
There are many petty reasons why the SLPD maybe trying to exacerbate racial tension on the wake of the Zimmerman verdict. But it is unconscionable that they do. San Leandro residents, of all races, deserve much better.
Note to “Bill”/”Leo” who tried to comment on this article: San Leandro Talk does not accept anonymous comments, except in “whistle blower” situations. Please read the blog’s rules and feel free to post again under your own real name (and yes, I verify identities :-).
My impression from talking to my neighbors is that most of the home invasions in San Leandro are by black males invading asian homes. It would be nice to know if this is a fact or not. Without Police reports including age, sex, gender of all parties, whether or not this is true can not be accurately determined. Of course, we could completely eliminate all racial reporting and pretend that the problem doesn’t exist. For example, government and the news media perhaps could have suppressed all race and sex information (including photos) from the Martin / Zimmerman case and thus avoided inflaming racial tensions.
It’s interesting that you get that impression and I wonder where it ultimately comes from. Unless we have only one group of home invaders in San Leandro, and your neighbors belong to that group so they can give you inside any information, any impressions about home invasions can either be based on very limited personal experience or on what’s been reported in the media, by the police.
As I mentioned, the police has issued a number of press releases about burglaries and home invasions, but only twice it mentioned the race of the victims: when these were Asian. So perhaps your and your neighbor’s impressions do come out from those very limited press releases. It seems likely.
I do agree that if, indeed, if any particular group is more vulnerable to a type of crime than another, that should be noted. But it has to be noted directly and with statistics, not indirectly by creating “impressions” that may not be accurate.
In any case, it does seem that the Police is succeeding in creating the impression that blacks are targeting Asians, and that, I think is what is very dangerous in a community such as ours.
woops, I meant to say ‘Police reports including age, sex, race …’ (not ‘age, sex, gender…’)