Hate Crimes Saw 'Sustained Spike' in NYC In 2017, Experts Say

NEW YORK, NY — On Oct. 25, a pre-dawn phone call from police jolted Rabbi Rachel Ain awake. A police officer delivered shocking news — the Jewish congregation she had led for five years had become a target of hate.

Around 5 a.m., three men dressed in white spray-painted a pink swastika on the front doors of Sutton Place Synagogue in Midtown Manhattan. Surveillance cameras caught the vandals in action, but no one had been arrested.

“It didn’t shock me that it happened because I think that the tenor, the mood of the country has been hating other groups,” Ain said.

Indeed, hate crimes in New York City have become increasingly common. Over the last two years, 671 hate crimes have been reported here, including 333 this year as of Dec. 24.

Experts say that’s evidence of a “sustained spike” in New York hate crimes since President Donald Trump was elected last year. The NYPD recorded 376 attacks in 2016, with more than 10 percent occurring in the final week of December.

“This is reflective of a national trend in most of the large cities — you’re seeing large increases in hate crimes and various types of hate crimes,” said Frank Pezzella, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who studies hate crimes across the U.S.

Despite the hate crime spike, NYPD spokesman Lt. John Grimpel said 333 reported hate crimes is a "very, very low" number for a city of 8.5 million people.

Still, New York’s hate crime rate ranks third nationwide behind Phoenix and Los Angeles, according to FBI data.

In 2016, there were 4.2 hate crimes per 100,000 people in New York City, compared to Phoenix and Los Angeles, which posted about 11 and 5.7 hate crimes per capita, respectively.

Vandalism and harassment make up the bulk of the crimes. The NYPD classifies 143 as criminal mischief, which includes property damage. Aggravated harassment, such as threatening letters, messages or phone calls, accounted for 80 of 2017's hate crimes. There were also 68 hate-motivated assaults, records show.

The most hate crimes occurred in Brooklyn this year. Some 115 were reported in the borough, which is home to the largest portion of New York City’s Jewish population.

Manhattan wasn’t far behind with 113 reports. Another 54 hate crimes occurred in Queens, 33 in the Bronx and 18 in Staten Island, according to NYPD data.

“Still very much the ‘other’”

Anti-Semitic hate crimes — especially vandalism involving swastikas — have been a persistent problem this year, NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said.

There have been 148 anti-Semitic hate crimes reported so far in 2017, up from 138 in 2016 and 126 in 2015, police say.

The sustained spike has created a climate of fear among Jewish people, experts say.

“In the United States, we wanted to believe that anti-Semitism is gone and that we’ve fully integrated into the life of the American community and in many ways, we have,” Rabbi Ain said.

“But for some we are still very much the ‘other,’ and we need to be aware of what that status can do.”

So far this year, police have reported 33 hate crimes against African-Americans, a 57-percent spike over the 21 racially motivated crimes against blacks in 2016.

A black man, Timothy Caughman, was the victim of this year’s only hate-motivated murder in March at the hands of James Jackson, a white supremacist who traveled from Baltimore on a mission to kill black people, according to prosecutors.

Crimes against Muslims and Hispanics have also increased, police statistics show. Muslims were targeted in hate-related attacks 34 times so far this year, up from 31 at the same time in 2016. There have been seven anti-Hispanic crimes, up from just two in 2016.

On December 26, Souad Kirama, a Muslim woman, said she was punched, kicked and called a terrorist in a Brooklyn Heights Panera Bread cafe.

"Customers were sitting there one inch away from all this vicious attack and said nothing and did nothing," Kirama said in a Facebook Live video. "They were just having their coffee like nothing is happening."

“Nobody’s exempt”

Racially divisive political rhetoric from groups associated with Trump White House — and from the president himself — has emboldened hate groups, experts say.

“When there is an atmosphere that’s been created by so-called leaders that encourages intolerance and feeds intolerant rhetoric, it can cause people to feel they can act out on their prejudices,” said Elizabeth OuYang, a civil rights attorney and professor at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.

The size and visibility of New York City’s Jewish community in particular makes it an “easy target” for anti-Semites who feel so emboldened, said Melanie Robbins, the associate director for the Anti-Defamation League in New York.

The ADL saw big increases in hate crime reports after major events that brought hateful rhetoric to the forefront, Robbins said, such as the violence in August at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump’s failure to condemn that violence likely stoked the flames, experts said.

The NYPD’s hate crimes task force, the largest in the nation, has drawn praise from advocates for aggressively identifying and investigating hate crimes.

Grimpel said the task force does its own outreach to victims of the crimes. Neighborhood coordination officers in local precincts also work every day to form relationships with the communities they patrol, and sometimes attend hate crime-related events that advocacy groups host, he said.

“They're out in the community talking to, as you would say, the underreporting targeted communities,” Grimpel said.

Grimpel said hate crimes are reported at the same rates as other crimes. But experts insist that they still may be underreported because some minority groups have strained relationships with law enforcement.

It’s important for those groups to work with law enforcement and with each other to combat their attackers, Pezzella said.

To that end, the ADL has done more outreach to Hispanic and Latino communities this year, conducting workshops on how to identify and report hate crimes, Robbins said.

For Rabbi Ain, forming relationships is key to stopping the problem. That’s how her synagogue — and the surrounding neighborhood — responded to the swastika attack there, she said.

About 100 people attended a prayer service the evening her synagogue became a hate crime statistic. Ain said the “outpouring of love” drove away the sadness and fear caused by the attack.

“Nobody’s exempt,” she said. “Hatred has no boundaries, but connection also has no boundaries.”

(Lead image: People participate in an anti-hate rally at a Brooklyn park named in memory of Beastie Boys band member Adam Yauch after it was defaced with swastikas on November 20, 2016 in New York City. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)