Anti-Semitic graffiti tops NYC subway hate crimes

Transit officials say anti-Semitic graffiti incidents are the top subway bias crime investigated so far this year by the New York Police Department.

The Daily News reported Tuesday that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Transit Bureau says 22 of 31 hate crimes that have happened in the subway system this year targeted Jews. Most of the incidents have involved graffiti.

The report to the MTA board says there were only seven bias crimes committed during the same period last year.

The anti-Semitic graffiti on subway cars and in stations has included swastikas and comments that advocate the killing of Jews.

“It was precisely this kind of statistic, this kind of conduct that gave birth in ‘34 to ‘38 to what led to the Holocaust, which we try to remember today,” MTA board member Charles Moerdler, a Holocaust survivor, told the Daily News. “What, if anything, can be done, is being done to root out these scum?”

Transit police say each case gets an investigation from a captain or a higher ranking officer.

“We take each one of these incidents seriously,” Transit Bureau Assistant Chief Vincent Coogan said in the report, but admitted that “it is sometimes difficult to make an arrest” in a graffiti case.

Officials say felony assault cases and grand larcenies have also increased this year.