Pittsburgh Shooting Comes Amid Spike In Hate Crimes

NEW YORK — The murder of 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue by a man who said he wanted to kill Jews came amid an alarming number of hate crime attacks in New York City in recent years.

The NYPD had recorded 116 bias incidents specifically targeted against Jews as of Oct. 7, slightly fewer than the same period in 2017, according to the New York Daily News. But this year has already seen 12 anti-Semitic assaults, up from 11 in all of last year, the Anti-Defamation League told the paper.

President Donald Trump reportedly plans to visit Pittsburgh on Tuesday despite some Jewish leaders saying he's not welcome until he fully denounces white nationalism.

In an investigation last year, Patch found that hate crimes as a whole in New York City have seen a "sustained spike" since Trump was elected in 2016. Some 333 hate crimes had been reported in 2017 as of Dec. 24. The NYPD recorded 376 attacks in 2016, with more than 10 percent occurring in the final week of December.

Some 320 attacks had been reported as of Nov. 5, 2017, compared with just 274 in the same period in 2016, the NYPD said last year. That means more than 100 hate crimes were committed in the final days of Trump's campaign and the roughly two months after his Nov. 8 election victory.

"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," Frank Pezzella, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who studies hate crimes across the U.S., told Patch last year.

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 ranked 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 made up the bulk of the crimes. The NYPD classified 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 last 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.

There were 148 anti-Semitic hate crimes reported in 2017 as of late December, up from 138 in 2016 and 126 in 2015, police said.

The sustained spike 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 Rachel Ain of the Sutton Place Synagogue told Patch last year. "But for some we are still very much the 'other,' and we need to be aware of what that status can do."

(Lead image: People participate in a vigil at Queens Borough Hall on Monday after 11 people were killed in a shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue. Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)