NYC Hate Crimes Hit Jews More Than Other Groups Combined In 2018

NEW YORK — Bigotry against Jewish people has fueled a spike in hate crimes in New York City in 2018, police statistics show. The NYPD has recorded 352 hate crimes this year as of Sunday, up about 6 percent from 331 in the same time last year.

Jews have been targeted in more than half those incidents. There have been 183 anti-Semitic hate crimes so far this year, a 22 percent increase from last year and a 38.6 percent spike from around the same time in 2016, NYPD figures show.

"It’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle," said Evan R. Bernstein, the Anti-Defamation League's regional director for New York and New Jersey.

"I think that 12 to 14 percent is activated, and I think that they are showing themselves more and more," Bernstein added, referring to the share of Americans that ADL research shows hold anti-Semitic beliefs.

Crimes targeting black, white and Asian people have also increased this year, as have those based on sexual orientation, NYPD figures show. Those categories combined still include fewer crimes than the number of anti-Semitic incidents.

(Data: NYPD)

Crimes targeting other groups have fallen or stayed flat compared to last year, with anti-Muslim incidents dropping by nearly half, according to police figures. There have been 18 of those so far this year, down from 34 last year and 31 in 2016.

This year's figures continue to reflect a sustained increase in hate crimes over the past three years. Some officials have blamed President Donald Trump for emboldening bigoted violence.

Among this year's hate-fueled crimes was a spate of anti-Semitic incidents in New York City that followed the shooting to death of 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue by a lone gunman who said he wanted to kill Jews. The Oct. 27 massacre "opened up people even more to act out on these feelings," Bernstein said.

"I think for certain people it gave them (a) green light and that’s what is so concerning," he said.

The ADL has recorded a 60 percent increase in anti-Semitic assaults this year, Bernstein said. Several have occurred in Brooklyn, where two Hasidic people were attacked within about a block of each other in Williamsburg one week in late November.

There has also been a recent "normalization" of anti-Semitic vandalism, a harmful crime that's often difficult for police to solve, Bernstein said.

A Prospect Heights synagogue was vandalized with the phrase "Die Jew rats" just days after the Pittsburgh attack. And a Columbia University professor found swastikas painted in her office late last month.

Those kinds of crimes are meant to intimidate not just the individual victims but the entire groups to which they belong, said Frank Pezzella, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who studies hate crimes across the U.S.

"When you tag a store or a synagogue with a swastika, that’s a symbol of imminent danger," Pezzella said. "It’s a terrorist symbol. So the whole point is to try (and) let these people know that they are not wanted."

The NYPD has responded to hate crimes by working with affected communities and increasing the police presence near houses of worship and in other places, according to police officials.

Earlier this month, Police Commissioner James O'Neill said he would add investigators to the department's Hate Crime Task Force if necessary "to make sure we make these arrests as quickly as possible."

"They have tremendous success, and I’m very confident that together with the patrol response, with the investigative resources that we’re bringing to bare, we will really turn the tide here in what we’re seeing," Shea, the chief of detectives, said at a Dec. 4 news conference.

The NYPD's figures do not show the anti-Semitic incidents among kindergartners through 12th-graders that the ADL has recorded, Bernstein said. Young people are influenced by hateful messages they find online, he said, where bigots find easy anonymity.

While anti-Semitism in New York City and across America is a complex creature, Bernstein said the rise of troubling rhetoric is playing a role in the hate crime spike.

"We can’t let this become the new normal, especially for young people," he said.

(Lead image: A New York City police officer stands next to his patrol car as he watches over crowds of rabbis gathering for a group photo at the Chabad-Lubavitch World Headquarters in New York on Sunday, Nov. 4, 2018. Photo by Mark Lennihan/Associated Press)