REST IN PEACE GRANDPA VICHA:  In 2021, Antoine Watson, crossed the street to shove 84-year-old  Vicha Ratanapakdee to the pavement, resulting in Ratanapakdee’s death.  Watson then went back to his car to fetch his phone and took pictures of what he had done.   There was no apparent reason for Watson’s action.  He didn’t know Ratanapakdee.  It was pure free-floating malice.  Watson is a monster.

His murder trial just ended in San Francisco.  The jury found him NOT guilty of murder in either the first or second degree, but guilty of involuntary manslaughter and guilty of using force likely to produce great bodily harm.  Not surprisingly, there is disappointment in the Asian community, and I’m not so thrilled about it either.

Watson’s crime was brought to the attention of the Commission on Civil Rights when the Commission was working up its report on “Anti-Asian Racism.”  Then as now, I wasn’t  big on the concept of “hate crimes.”  I don’t much care if an animal like Watson was motivated by his victim’s race or just by the desire to inflict harm on some random person (and the latter seems to have been the case).  First and foremost the duty of government is to protect people from violence.  In the early 2020s, it was failing spectacularly in that duty.  And things still aren’t that great.

What bothered me most about the Commission’s report is how it seemed to be interested only in scaring Asian Americans into believing that large numbers of their fellow Americans wanted to kill them because of their race.  It didn’t have much to say about how to stop those crimes or about crime in general and how to stop it.  Instead, the report seemed to be cynically focused on funding useless “bias training” (and on the ever-popular task of getting votes for Democrats).  Anybody who thinks Antoine Watson would have benefited from a little “bias training” is an idiot.   My Commissioner Statement for that report is here.