As Chinatown unites in support of creating Chicago's first Asian-majority ward, fault lines emerge over crime and policing

CHICAGO — When Andrew Toy heard about a fatal shooting near his home late last year, he rushed to see if he could help Chicago police with video from his home’s security camera.

The 63-year-old lifelong resident of Chinatown and active member of the neighborhood’s Facebook watch group said cooperating with police was an easy decision. “I got young children in the neighborhood,” Toy said. “I don’t want them or my wife or neighbor to be the next victim.”

What authorities called the “execution style” shooting of Toy’s neighbor, Woom Sing Tse, 71 and a longtime Chinatown fixture, was the latest of several acts of violence affecting the Asian community in the Near South Side neighborhood in the last couple of years. Homicides in 2021 in the 9th District, which includes Chinatown and Bridgeport, are up 14% from the year before and 121% compared with 2019, according to Chicago police.

Toy said he feels that elected officials at all levels of government are failing residents.

He’s among many in the Near South Side enclave supporting the creation of Chicago’s first-ever majority Asian ward, which would unify Chinatown and nearby areas with fast-growing Asian American populations.

It’s a goal he thinks could come to fruition during the ongoing ward remapping process in the Chicago City Council.

While Toy is not alone in his support for such a ward, residents and stakeholders vary on what they want from an alderman. Many of those differences revolve around attitudes toward law enforcement.

Toy says he’s an independent who voted for Democrat Barack Obama but then backed Republican Donald Trump. For him, officials must support a strong police department.

Chinatown residents haven’t always been so quick to trust law enforcement, Toy said, given language barriers and fears over immigration status.

But, like him, a new wave of community members are increasingly concerned over recent high-profile murders of Asian Chicagoans, and are clamoring for solutions that include more police and vigilant neighbors.

“Thank God for CPD,” Toy said. “Everybody says defund the police and guess what? They’re the only ones doing their job.”

Darek Lau, a program assistant with Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community, said Chinatown residents nearly always list public safety as a concern when asked about their top priorities, followed by education, including an effort to bring a high school to the neighborhood, and more bilingual services.

But Lau, a Bridgeport resident whose parents emigrated from Guangdong, China, and Hong Kong, said he doesn’t think more aggressive policing is a permanent answer to rising crime.

He wants his next alderman to support reallocating Chicago police funding to other social services at some point, but first the city should continue exploring sending mental health crisis responders in lieu of officers in certain situations, he said.

“Policing is a complicated solution; it has to be really thoughtful,” Lau said. “While I would like to see a future where police aren’t as needed and don’t take up as much of our budget, I think it will take many years to develop.”

Much of Chinatown is now represented on the City Council by 25th Ward Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez, with a slice also in the 11th Ward of Alderman Patrick Daley Thompson, a member of the famous Bridgeport political family who is under indictment for alleged tax offenses and has a trial set for February.

Under some proposed maps, Thompson’s ward would be redrawn into a majority Asian ward that includes Chinatown, Bridgeport and chunks of McKinley Park.

Should Daley Thompson be forced to leave his seat, Mayor Lori Lightfoot would get to appoint his successor, giving that person a likely political advantage in seeking a full four-year term in the 2023 city election.

On a national level, most of Chinatown supported Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, but Trump’s share of the vote increased significantly over 2016 in several precincts, according to the Chicago Board of Elections.

Advocates of a majority Asian ward on both sides of the political spectrum agree that they want someone who understands the needs of the area’s growing immigrant community, which mainly speaks Mandarin and Cantonese.

The supporters also argue that the need for such a ward is especially pressing after the 2020 U.S. census found Asian Americans are the fasting growing racial group in Chicago. The number of city residents who identify as Asian increased by 31% over the last decade, census figures show.

Daley Thompson threw cold water on the idea of a majority Asian ward in a Dec. 1 letter to ward residents, citing the need to keep neighborhoods like Canaryville intact and that “dividing areas or neighborhoods on race is indeed racism.”

In a Dec. 21 town hall on Chinatown safety, Daley Thompson did not contradict that position but said that “consolidating, uniting Chinatown into one ward so that there’s one point of contact I think will also help in terms of the services we can provide working with the 9th district, working with the police.”

Daley Thompson did not return a request for comment following that meeting.

Consuela Hendricks of Washington Heights spends a lot of time in Chinatown and, while she supports the idea of an Asian majority ward, expresses some concerns.

Hendricks, who is Black, began working as a youth organizer in Chinatown as a teenager at Curie Metropolitan High School before becoming co-founder of the community group People Matter. Hendricks said she hasn’t always been made to feel welcome by the neighborhood’s Asian residents.

She said pedestrians sometimes cross the street when they see her, or whisper derogatory Chinese phrases near her, such as “hak gwei” or “hei gui,” which mean “black ghost” in Cantonese and Mandarin, respectively.

Less blatant but just as concerning to her are the calls for heightened police presence or the signs reading “Asian Lives Matter” at recent protests against violence toward Asian Americans.

“That’s a rebuttal to Black Lives Matter,” Hendricks said about the slogan. “It is ultimately very sad to see two groups of color who are in need of so much to be (pitted) against each other.”

In September, People Matter established a public safety commission to address alternate solutions to gun violence in neighborhoods such as Chinatown, ones that don’t wind up making Black people feel less safe.

She said she hopes the next alderman of the potential Asian majority ward is dedicated to bridging racial gaps in the neighborhood.

“(Chinatown) is well-deserving to have its own ward,” Hendricks said. “The only thing I’m worried about as a Black person in Chinatown is the increasing anti-Blackness, and I’m just worried about the wrong person in power once elected.”

In December, during a town hall meeting on public safety in Chinatown with police leaders, differences on how to tackle crime continued to emerge.

Chicago police Superintendent David Brown nodded to an audience member who lamented instances of young people engaging in violence, saying: “You’re exactly right. They have a really fast revolving door being released back to their parents.”

It was another apparent shot by Brown at the release policies of the Cook County chief judge’s and state’s attorney’s offices, which have also been criticized by Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

Other politicians, including state Rep. Theresa Mah, who represents Chinatown, and Sigcho-Lopez talked about immediate issues such as increased surveillance cameras and streetlights as well as holistic approaches to combating crime like bolstering mental health services.

Some people participating in the meeting through Zoom wrote messages in Chinese in support of suppressing “riots” and calling for Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s resignation if violence in the city does not abate.

Patrick McShane, president of the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, received a round of applause for saying, “We in Chinatown … appreciate our Chicago Police Department.”

Grace Chan McKibben, executive director of CBCAC, said ahead of the meeting that she expected wide-ranging opinions from a community that has always bucked its stereotype of being “quiet and docile.” She is less focused on its internal divisions and more on getting representation in the next ward map.

“We just want to be able to be sure that the community’s voices are heard,” Chan McKibben said. “In the general discourse when people talk about the different races, Asian Americans are very often ignored. And we just want to make sure that is not the case.”

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