The San Jose Police Department announced the arrest of six suspects accused of victimizing vulnerable people, especially Asian women in a robbery around the Bay Area.
The gang of criminals was the main suspect in a string of robberies targeting 177 elderly women in the San Francisco Bay area, Daily Mail reported.
San Jose Police Chief Anthony Mata said that San Jose police had arrested six men following a year-long investigation into the “prolific robbery crew” that targeted the area’s elderly women, especially around the city’s Little Saigon neighborhood.
The suspects were identified as Cameron Alonzo Moody, 27, of East Palo Alto; Hassani Burleson Ramsey, 24, of Oakland; and Anthony Michael Robinson, also 24, of Stockton.
23-year-old Derje Damond Blanks from San Jose; and 21-year-olds Clarence Jackson and Malik Short, from East Palo Alto and Tracy, respectively, were also arrested.
“Asian females were frequently the targeted victims and many were injured during the robberies,” according to the police department, adding that all of the accused got hate crime enhancements with their charges.
They were personally identified by Asian victims as well as the witnesses.
They could be linked to as many as 177 robberies, burglaries, and thefts throughout the greater San Francisco area, San Jose police Capt. Brian Shab said.
“There is no doubt that these suspects believed they could prey on these victims because of their ethnicity, because of their gender,” Shab told reporters.
The six suspects were arrested following a yearlong investigation, during which at least one ghost gun was recovered, department officials said. The arrests should send a “strong message” to members of the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, San Jose police said in a statement.
“Criminals who wish to target you because of your ethnicity, or your gender, will be met with the tenacity of the finest police officers, detectives, and attorneys in the nation, and this case is a great example of that,” department officials said.
The six suspects stalked their victims and attacked them while alone at locations like grocery store parking lots and fled afterward, prosecutors told the Washington Post.
“These victims … were being essentially hunted,” prosecutor Marisa McKeown of the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office told the newspaper. “It’s been a terrifying experience. If you were an Asian female in certain parts of San Jose, it would feel — and it actually was — unsafe [at] certain times of day to go to the bank, to go to the grocery store.”
The crew made off with up to $2,000 in each robbery, McKeown said, and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and belongings altogether.
The suspects were arrested in September and November, Shab said. If convicted on all charges, one of the men faces up to 95 years in prison, he said.
Sources: AWM, Washington Pos
