> Unfortunately, random Asian people getting brutalized when they're going about their daily business has been a long-standing problem in a number of cities.

It increased after the pandemic (https://abcnews.go.com/US/hate-crimes-asians-rose-76-2020-am... and https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-hate-crimes-against-c...). It's hard to get data on people's motivations for crimes, but we can very clearly see drastic shifts in trends and this was trending higher than the baseline "generalized ethnic resentment" you'd expect to see normally.