“As a whole, anti-Semitic hate crimes in New York City are up 63% this year as compared with last year,” according to officials cited in the CNN report.
By World Israel News Staff
More than half the hate crimes reported in New York City during the first eight months of the year were of an anti-Semitic nature, according to NYC Police Department officials, as reported by CNN.
Most of the reported incidents were said to be acts of vandalism: graffiti or swastikas scrawled on synagogues and other locations, said New York City Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea in the CNN report. The review covers incidents through September 1, said the network.
Most of the incidents “do not involve personal action and assault,” said Shea, though acknowledging that there were some reports of assaults.
“As a whole, anti-Semitic hate crimes in New York City are up 63% this year as compared with last year,” according to officials cited in the CNN report.
It actually marked a smaller increase than a report issued earlier this year.
“The NYPD received 176 complaints of hate crimes from January 1 to May 19, an 83 percent increase in all hate crimes compared to the same period in 2018,” said the Coordination Forum for Countering anti-Semitism, sourcing a report back then from the Wall State Journal.
After the New York City Council created an office for hate crime prevention to handle the growing problem, the Forum says, “they quickly realized that a majority of reported hate crimes are committed against Jews.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio recently named former Anti-Defamation League (ADL) official Deborah Lauter as the executive director of the NYC Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes (OPHC).
“Just last week, a 63-year-old Jewish man was out for his morning walk in Crown Heights when a man threw a massive brick at his face,” reports Bklyner, a Brooklyn news outlet, adding that “a few days before that, a woman told an 18-year-old Muslim girl [on a train] to ‘Go back to your country’ and ‘What is that rag on your head?’ She then spat on the girl’s face and threw her cup of soda at her,” said the local news website.
It reported that NYPD statistics show that anti-Semitic incidents have been taking place particularly in areas that are “home to many Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn.” The chief of detectives noted a series of attacks in Brooklyn in which victims were assaulted on their way to Jewish morning services, said CNN.
Other incidents included the discovery of a Post-it note with the phrase “Hitler is Coming” written on it and placed on a billboard display in front of the Jewish Children’s Museum in Brooklyn in June, police said, as cited in the CNN report.