Hate Crime Charge in Attack on South Bay McDonald’s Worker

A 40-year-old San Jose woman has been charged with a hate crime for allegedly attacking McDonald’s employees and calling them “stupid” and “f*cking Mexicans.”

According to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, the incident happened at 6:45am Saturday after two staffers asked Alena Jenkins to leave the Mountain View eatery because she refused repeated requests to don a face mask.

When the cashier finally asked her to leave the premises for violating the restaurant’s pandemic-safety protocols, prosecutors say Jenkins responded by saying, “F*cking Mexican! Go ahead and call the cops!”

When Mountain View police were called, as she requested, authorities say Jenkins shoved a plexiglass shield and sign at the cashier.

At that point, a McDonald’s manager intervened and echoed the employee’s demands that Jenkins leave. Jenkins, authorities say, then walked around the service counter, called the supervisor a “stupid Mexican” and swung a closed fist at his arm and shoulder.

Even after police arrived, Jenkins continued spewing racist comments about the McDonald’s workers, calling them “dumb Mexicans … who don’t know how to speak English,” according to prosecutors.

Jenkins is set to be arraigned today on misdemeanor counts of hate crime and battery.

“Targeting people because of their perceived ethnicity is not just a shame, it’s a crime,” DA Jeff Rosen said in a press release. “There is no excuse for hatred.”

A Broader Trend

The case against Jenkins comes just a couple weeks after the DA filed a hate crime charge against another San Jose resident—32-year-old Johan Strydom—for allegedly attacking an Asian-American woman on March 10 at the Diridon Station.

Reported hate incidents against Asian-Americans have dominated headlines for being on the rise since the start of the pandemic, but data show that such attacks on other minority groups have been trending upward as well.

According to FBI statistics, law enforcement-documented hate crimes rose to their highest level in a decade in the past couple years. The federal agency’s hate crimes report for 2019 showed that the uptick was slight—barely 3 percent—but that the crimes were more violent and deadly than the years prior.

According to the same FBI tally, 2019 marked the third consecutive year with more than 7,000 reported hate crimes—a level not seen since 2008.

In 2020, xenophobia against people of Asian descent skyrocketed, according to data collected by advocacy nonprofit Stop AAPI Hate, which documented 3,800 physical attacks, slurs, shunning and other apparently hate-inspired incidents in the span of the five first months of the pandemic. It marked an uptick of 800 incidents compared to those same five months in 2019, the organization found.

A disproportionate number of anti-Asian attacks have targeted women, a trend brought into stark relief when a white gunman killed eight people in a shooting rampage that targeted massage parlors largely staffed by Asian immigrants.

Six of the victims were Asian women.

The massacre sparked a national conversation about the tragic consequences of overlapping hatreds such as racism, misogyny and discrimination against sex workers.

Local Action

In the South Bay, community leaders have held multiple rallies to denounce anti-Asian discrimination. Meanwhile, some local lawmakers have introduced proposals to address the uptick in reported hate-related incidents.

On Tuesday, Santa Clara County Supervisor Otto Lee—a Chinese-American with family roots in Hong Kong—unveiled a plan to research anti-Asian incidents in the South Bay and to create a public education campaign to discourage such attacks.

The supervisor also called on law enforcement to invest more resources into protecting Asian-owned businesses and residents, who comprise some 800,000 of the county’s 2 million residents. Lee also proposed a series of town halls to give the local Asian community a chance to talk about hate incidents that may have gone unreported because of language barriers or fear of retaliation.

County staff plans to report back on those referrals, with recommendations about how fund them, at a Board of Supervisors session in May.

Jennifer Wadsworth is the former news editor for San Jose Inside and Metro Silicon Valley. Follow her on Twitter at @jennwadsworth.

21 Comments

  1. “Targeting people because of their perceived ethnicity is not just a shame, it’s a crime,” — DA Jeff Rosen

    Based on the report there is no evidence Miss Jenkins entered the business intent on targeting anyone or anyone’s ethnicity, nor is there evidence that she possessed any such intent prior to being provoked by the employees directing her to leave the premises. Instead, what the evidence (as reported here) shows is Miss Jenkins targeted the employees for offending her, for telling her something she did not want to hear, about a rule she did not wish to respect.

    Angered and apparently incapable of civilized conduct (likely due to intoxication and mental instability), Miss Jenkins said some bad words (for the record, Mexican is not a bad word). She went on to commit some minor criminal mischief, making herself deserving of being arrested and charged for what she did, not for what Jeff Rosen wants us to believe was in her heart.

    What the District Attorney has done with this case is demonstrate his disgraceful opposition to free speech, his intent to wage war against it, and his frightening willingness to stockpile his political arsenal by exploiting the crazed rantings of this county’s population of drunk, drugged, and disturbed derelicts. Of course he’s not alone in this; prosecutors of his ilk, as well as law enforcement executives of both the short-sighted and obscenely ambitious varieties, know America produces nowhere near the number of legitimate and politically-useful hate crimes (i.e. not committed by black thugs) they need to fuel their agenda, so they unabashedly elevate the crazed tantrums of lunatics into headline-grabbing, hysteria promoting propaganda.

    The America Jeff Rosen wants will have the kind of speech laws common in Europe, where the standard for what can and can’t be said is governed not by the people but by powerful lobbyists (a possibility which must have the creeps at Google and FaceBook wringing their tyrannical hands).

    For a up close and personal look at Rosen’s big, scary prize check out:
    https://www.mountainview.gov/news/displaynews.asp?NewsID=1742&TargetID=9

  2. To:PHU TAN ELLI

    While I would agree that we have to be very careful not to infringe on people’s First (and Second) Amendment rights. I don’t think that your argument holds water in this case. While I would suspect that the women is most likely homeless, mentally unstable (means way off her meds) and/or drug addled, she should be charged. If you are going to charge one homeless lunatic with a hate crime for similar behavior and words, you have to charge them all — even the ones in the “protected intersectional classes.”

  3. HB,

    I too think she should be charged, on the vandalism and/or assault alleged, but not on what no man has ever been credibly proven able to do, and that is to read the mind of another. The idea that the workers insulted, the cops on the scene, or the prosecutor can say with any degree of certainty why Miss Jenkins said the things she did is fantasy, perhaps with a slug of arrogance added.

    What if what Miss Jenkins had said was this: “I got death ray eyes, you stupid Mexicans, and I’m going to incinerate you.” Is the criminal justice system qualified to decide which of those fourteen words motivated her accompanying behavior? Might it have been driven by her frustration upon realizing her death ray eyes had failed her? Would that have made her assault a “frustration crime?” Yes, that is ridiculous, every bit as ridiculous as the thought police zeroing in on the supposed hate words.

    This is not a slippery slope issue, this is a plunge off a damned cliff. Give the Jeff Rosens of the world enough arbitrary authority and they’ll soon have the same power over their political enemies that Stalin had over his.

  4. This is so clearly a propaganda war to spread government authority it isn’t even funny. It is clear in the first paragraph. For all her “punching up” rhetoric, Ms. Wadsworth continuously shills for these petty tyrants and aid in their ever growing power grab. The endgame is obvious, but oh how the naïve will be disappointed when they get there.

  5. The US had 6,121 hate crimes reported in a recent year. ( not all were founded and many were only verbal in nature, which were often uttered by a drunken lout or hopped up homeless addict) We have 360,000,000 Americans. That is a rate of 1.70027777778E-5.

    There are 4,500,000 dog bites annually .
    Over 600,000 children were aborted each year.
    And, 67,367 annual drug overdose deaths.
    Which seems more important?

  6. Steven:

    All people have a constitutional right not to be the victims of crime.
    I am not excusing hate crimes. They happen, they are real. I have had a hate crime perpetrated against me — a real one. Interestingly enough, while cleaning up the aftermath of the hate crime, it occurred to me that the cost and the work to clean up what The Vandals had done was exactly was the same irrespective of their motive.

    There are also plenty of hate crime hoaxes.

    https://www.city-journal.org/campus-hate-crime-hoaxes

    Read Professor Willfred Reilly’s book. Think Jusse Smolette. Al Sharpton and Ms Brawly.

    https://freebeacon.com/politics/sharpton-cant-admit-tawana-brawley-hoax/

    Having one’s car or house vandalized (which is covered by insurance. I know you are big on assessing blame on people who don’t carry insurance to cover every conceivable risk. ) should be kept in perspective.

    I don’t want to see anyone become the subject of a hate crime. Heck, truth be told, I don’t want people to even be rude to one another.

    But let’s keep things in perspective. In a 15 year period over 520 people were killed by dogs and millions of Americans suffered from the continuing trauma of a serious dog attack.
    https://www.dogsbite.org/dog-bite-statistics-fatalities-2019.php?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI8uKansLL7wIVEz2tBh1VYgMnEAAYASABEgJYZfD_BwE

    In that same 15 year period, about 9,000,000 babies were aborted.

    Regarding the current spike in AAPI hate crimes, please provide data on the race of the of the perpetrator and the ZIP Codes were most of the hate crimes occur.

    https://trendingpolitics.com/here-is-who-is-behind-all-those-hate-crimes-against-asians-youve-been-hearing-about-in-the-news-knab/

    Perspective, my dear boy, perspective!

  7. Since this press has declined to post a picture of the perpetrator, we can conclude that Ms. Jenkins is not an eevil white person. CORRECT?

    The same press that is STILL pushing the idea that Atlanta was an anti-Asian hate crime, although there is ZERO evidence of such. Notably, I have yet to see one headline discussing possible hate crime against our Syrian Boulder shooter.
    The press disgusts me, they are propagating hate themselves. Nothing good will come from it.

  8. So, this means that Biden and Harris are racists, correct?
    When this was happening under President Trumps term, the media deemed him a racist.
    The same must hold for Biden. And Biden also caused the recent shootings.

    Also, when is the media going to do more stories on the horrific problem at the boarder?
    It’s becoming a humanitarian issue now. Wasn’t under President Trumps term.

    Wake up people! Your freedom’s are slowly being taken away

  9. Let’s not just single out Whites for racism.

    Recently two black men set a white man on fire, WHILE HE WAS ALIVE!
    They are being charged with a hate crime. But, it is barely covered in the news.

    Am I suppose to still feel sorry for the black men who set the man on fire? And hang BLM banners all over the place, protest, knock down statues of our history?
    Or should I feel sorry for the white man. Hang WLM banners all over the place, protest and knock down Martin Luther King statues?

    If you don’t see the very biased reporting to control the public, you need to open your eyes.

  10. So, this must mean Biden is a racist. When this was happening under President Trump, the media deemed him a racist. So, the must hold true for Biden.

    Also, when is the media going to do more stories on the boarder crisis? It’s becoming a humanitarian issue now. Wasn’t under President Trumps term.

    Wake up America, your freedoms’ are slowly being taken from you.

  11. Totally agree with you. When blacks kill whites, it is barely covered in the news.
    Where is Sharpton and Jessie Jackson when a white person is killed by blacks? Nowhere.

  12. Why MR. Goldberg why would you want to prosecute this poor miserable person when the state has ignored all kind of other volant crimes and felonies. Is this not a sanctuary town, in a sanctuary county, in a sanctuary state.
    Release her for no bail and have her promise to return at some date in the future.
    We must all be treated equally or your a “Racist”

  13. The attacks on the Asian community, and community in general (crime has gone up tremendously since the pandemic) shows that hate and anger come in all shapes, sizes, genders and colors. Though, the media pushes the “angry white man narrative.” Fact is, most of the hate crimes against Asians are perpetrated by other minority communities, and that is just a fact. That is not a pass for the crazy white people committing crimes – it’s an acknowledgement that there are just crazy people of all colors. Anytime a race is not listed in an article – it usually means the suspect is not white. Never will the news say “a black man attacked an asian woman.” It does not fit the narrative. Until we acknowledge that human nature is the issue, bot a particular skin-color, we won’t get very far in addressing the increases in violence.

  14. The incident happened at 6:45am. That’s pretty early for Karen to be out, hatin’ on the McDonalds employees. Glad the cops took her in, especially since Karen was throwing punches.

  15. HB, Facts matter, important to decide what matters most, and appreciate ones you cited. The latest CDC figures I’ve seen show a slightly higher figure for ODs – over 70K / year.

    But the largest avoidable cause of fatalities was omitted: Medical errors. Somewhere between 250K to 440K deaths per year per medical school researchers.

    The FBI figures are grossly underreported if we treat events like BLM & Antifa actions as hate crimes.

  16. “But the largest avoidable cause of fatalities was omitted: Medical errors. Somewhere between 250K to 440K deaths per year per medical school researchers.”

    Yes!

    All of these amateur “follow the science”-ist seem to just look past this. The body, well nourished, housed, regularly exercised and hygienic is by far the best doctor. Medicine has not been the boon so many of these progressives seem to claim. Doctors are human and they are both arrogant and prone to mistakes; while the limits to what we do know or what we can know is daunting. Other than vaccines, some serendipitous discoveries like penicillin or studying traditional remedies to make pharmaceuticals like aspirin, on balance the medical industry has been a life taker and a money sink, especially the people involved.

    Are you keeping your body clean? Are you keeping your teeth healthy? Are you fat? Are you sleeping? Are you drinking clean water?

    This is what matters.

    Life evolved for millions of years without $500/hour doctors. The human body follows a bathtub health curve, most die very young or very old. With attention we can probably do something about the young, certainly housing and food goes a long way. I guess one could argue vaccines help the young too, fine. But you can’t live forever. Live the best life you can with time you have and be as fit and clean as you can. Doctors can’t make you life better if you are obese with rotten teeth and skin rashes. Contrary to the hopes and dreams of the progressives, we will not invent a pill to make you fit, clean, and relaxed. A life well lived can though.

  17. In the meantime, DA Jeff Rosen has let out countless criminals out on the street by his no bail system. DA Rosen seems to go after low hanging fruit.

    A person can be charged because of their acts such as assault, but not because of their words. Even DA Rosen knows that fact.

  18. Dear Taxpayer: when they are in jail, they can’t commit a crime. This is the point of the three strikes type of laws. When someone has demonstrated that they are a habitual offender, give them life! By that point it’s not about rehab, it’s about protecting society.

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