“It’s pageantry, Bill, just put on a good show,” says San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) chief Russell Flanagan to officer Bill O’Hara, played by English actor Kieran Bew, who is promoted to sergeant to lead the squad.
Although heavily fictionalised, Warrior does hold a mirror to a long and difficult relationship between rival migrants and law enforcement at a time when the Irish resented the Chinese, who were willing to work for less and regarded to be taking Irish jobs.
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The 1850s and 1860s saw a huge influx of Chinese immigrants to the US, first to seek their fortune in the California Gold Rush and then to build the transcontinental railroad. But by the mid-1870s the gold had dried up and the railway was complete, and the US spiralled into the so-called Long Depression.
In July 1877, 28 years after the SFPD was first established, about 8,000 members of the Workingmen’s Party of California marched from San Francisco City Hall to Chinatown looking to cause trouble. The party had been set up by Irish immigrant Denis Kearney, who was known for his strident anti-Chinese views.
Over two days of rioting, chaos unfolded in the United States’ largest Chinatown, which resulted in significant damage to Chinese-owned property and the murder of four Chinese migrants.
In the early 1880s, the SFPD formed its first Chinatown Squad of about 16 officers to keep anti-Chinese hooligans away from the neighbourhood, but also rein in vice in the community.
It was during this period that the squad would attempt to settle disputes between the Suey Sing and Kwong Duck tongs (a type of organisation found among Chinese immigrants living in the United States often tied to criminal activity). This arrangement would last up until the great San Francisco fire and earthquake of 1906.
Tong wars ramped up again following World War I but were handled by well-respected inspector Jack Manion in the early 1920s. It was said that Manion convinced tong leaders to reach an agreement among themselves and stop the bloodshed.
On August 6, 1955, The New York Times reported the disbanding of the SFPD’s 75-year-old plain-clothed Chinatown Squad because it had achieved the “Americanisation of one of this city’s most tourist-appealing sections”.
Editorials in the bilingual Chinese World newspaper had criticised the Chinatown Squad for using harsh and illegal methods, and there had not been a murder attributed to the tongs since 1926. So the squad’s members were reassigned to new duties and policing moving forward would be carried out by uniformed officers.
Operating without a dedicated Chinatown police squad would last a quarter of a century, until the notorious Golden Dragon massacre. In the small hours of September 4, 1977, a bloody shoot-up at Washington Street’s Golden Dragon Restaurant left five dead and 11 wounded.
Four 17-year-old members of Chinatown gang Joe Boys were responsible for the attack, an attempted retaliation on rival gang the Wah Ching. The dead and wounded, however, were all non-gang members; the intended targets, who were sitting at a table at the back of the restaurant, were uninjured.
The attack cast San Francisco’s Chinatown back into the spotlight. The SFPD responded by establishing another dedicated band of officers with a similar focus on gang-related crime.
Today, that Chinatown squad is known as the Gang Task Force. One of its leading officers, Inspector Samson Chan, says that 21st-century crime in San Francisco’s Chinatown is focused on more lucrative endeavours.
“The kind of street shooting, robberies and kidnapping seen in the ’80s and ’90s are not so common today,” says Chan, a first-generation Asian-American who was born and raised in California. “[Now] it’s all about low-risk and high-reward crime, like narcotics trafficking, marijuana cultivation and prostitution houses.
“In the ’70s, Asian gangs had insignia and they claimed the streets. The ones who didn’t get wrapped up learned from these, and they learned not to associate themselves with earlier insignia. Nowadays it’s very difficult to say which gang claims which street or how they dress.”
Today there are about three major gangs, but also several loosely affiliated groups, says Chan, who has become the “go-to” officer for Chinatown and Asian-gang-related crime. He has been with the Gang Task Force since 2010, after first joining the SFPD in 2005.
Comprising 16 officers, the same size as the earlier Chinatown Squad, the Gang Task Force has had a massive impact on the Chinese community, Chan says, adding that Chinatown has become a safer place with crime tapering off since the task force was established in the late 1970s.
But the community is not immune to crime. When it comes to Chinatown, Chan says, “what’s enriching can also be very hindering”.
One of the reasons Chinatown residents are “susceptible to crime” is a language barrier. “They can get by pretty well within that four-to-five-block radius without having to speak English,” he says. Unfamiliarity with American culture and uncertainty about the law are two issues common among newer migrants, he adds.
It is an issue Chan witnessed first-hand growing up with migrant parents and part of the reason he decided to join the police force. As a first-generation Chinese-American, Chan says he grew up seeing his family’s own struggles “adapting to a new culture and new language”.
The SFPD’s dedicated Asian crime squad has funded a number of outreach programmes, and nearby substations are now staffed with Cantonese- and Mandarin-speaking officers.
Fliers and other materials handed out are often written in Chinese, and the SFPD has translators as well as a Chinese-language phone line. “That’s been a good thing and it’s helped a lot,” Chan says.
Despite the outreach initiatives, however, some residents are still reluctant to put their trust in the police. Culturally, newer migrants can also have a different understanding of local law and feel as if “minor” crimes are a bother to report, he says.
One of his early cases after joining the Gang Task Force involved a Chinese woman in her late 60s whose bag had been stolen as she stepped off a bus on her way home. It was the bus driver who called the police.
After being asked some questions in Cantonese, the woman opened up to Chan, telling him it was the third time her bag had been stolen and she had been storing her valuables in a money belt since the first two thefts.
“It was one of the cases that stuck with me. I see that in Chinatown a lot as well as with other crimes we would take very seriously,” he says, citing the Cantonese phrase bei min, which translates to “saving face”, as a reason Chinatown residents may not want to involve police officers in a crime.Being a native Cantonese speaker and having an understanding of Chinese culture has paid off, he adds.
“When I arrest someone, sometimes I try to show them a little respect or help them save face. I’ll try to handcuff them outside so their parents don’t have to see them in handcuffs. There are little things that go a long way.
“Sometimes these are the same people who can provide helpful information,” he adds. “Without showing them that respect, a year ago I wouldn’t have gotten that information.”
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