The media have lit up in recent weeks with stories and cable news segments about a “surge” in anti-Asian American violence across the country. Presumably, we should be looking for a solution, but not a single person on CNN or MSNBC is suggesting the most obvious one: more policing.

But there’s a problem. There’s no federal data on trends in crimes against Asian Americans — these claims come mostly from nonprofit advocacy groups and from city governments such as New York and Oakland, California. And while, again, there isn’t much data on the subject, virtually every incident caught on video shows a black male perpetrator.