Antisemitic hate crimes spiked in NYC last month — police data

By Luke Tress

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3 June 2026, 5:11 pm

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Luke Tress is The Times of Israel's New York correspondent.

Hate crimes targeting Jews spiked in New York City last month, compared to previous months.

There were 41 confirmed hate crimes targeting Jews in the city last month, according to NYPD data. The figure amounts to 60% of all hate crimes in the city in May, marking a slightly higher percentage than normal, and an average of one antisemitic hate crime every 18 hours.

Jews make up about 10% of the city’s population and are targeted in hate crimes in the city more than all other groups combined every month.

Experts say that many or most incidents are likely not reported to police.

Last month, there were three hate crimes targeting Asians, zero against Black people, one against an unspecified ethnicity, one based on gender, one against a Hispanic person, five against Muslims, 10 against unspecified religious groups, five based on sexual orientation, and one against a white person.

The antisemitic hate crimes in May marked a jump of 46% over the average for the previous three months. There were 30 confirmed antisemitic crimes in April, 32 in March, and 21 in February.

The NYPD changed its hate crime reporting in February, shifting from suspected incidents to confirmed incidents, so there is no data on confirmed incidents in January. After coming under criticism, the police now report both suspected and confirmed incidents.

So far this year, Jews have been targeted in 152 confirmed hate crimes in the city, accounting for 57% of the total — the same percentage as all of 2025. Hate crimes against all groups have increased 8.6% this year, compared to the same period last year. For Jews, incidents are up 6.3% this year.

The increase in hate crimes is bad news for Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who took office on January 1 and had pledged to combat hatred in the city.

The prevalence of hate crimes is affected by a range of factors largely outside of the city government’s control, such as broad social trends, national and international news, and the weather. Warmer weather tends to correlate with an increase, for example, as more people come in contact outdoors, which could account for some of the increase last month.