The New York City Police Department said that anti-Jewish hate crimes were up 70.8% in the city last month compared to May 2025. It didn’t inform the public that, if it compared statistics from the months in a broader way, the increase was more than double that—150%.
Under New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who overturned many of his predecessor’s executive orders protecting Jews and Israelis hours into his tenure, the city has twice changed the way it reports hate crimes after the Big Apple recorded a 182% increase in antisemitic hate crimes in Mamdani’s first month on the job.
In February, the city shared only “confirmed” hate crimes but not “reported” ones, and after a backlash, it said in March that it would record “confirmed” and “reported” hate crimes separately.
Mamdani’s spokeswoman has said that synagogues that host pro-Israel events violate international law, and the mayor has said several times that he would have the Israeli prime minister arrested in New York City. Jewish leaders have told JNS that the mayor isn’t doing enough to protect Jews in the city.
A JNS analysis suggests that since the city reported hate crime statistics for “confirmed” and “reported” incidents separately for March, the city has suggested that there is no percentage change in the 103 anti-Jewish “confirmed” hate crimes in that span in 2026 compared to 2025. But if the city also shared the statistics for “reported” anti-Jewish hate crimes, it would suggest that the 140 reported anti-Jewish hate crimes in the city from March to May are a 32% increase over similar incidents from March to May in 2025.
Last month, the NYPD said that there were 41 “confirmed” anti-Jewish hate crimes in the city, which it said was a 70.8% increase on the 24 “confirmed” in May 2025. When the department shared statistics last month on “reported” hate crimes, it said that 60 such reports targeted Jews. It didn’t provide information on how that compared to reported incidents in May 2025.
The 41 “confirmed” hate crimes targeting Jews in New York City last month represent more than 60% of the total number of “confirmed” hate crimes, 68, that month. Jessica Tisch, commissioner of the NYPD, has said that Jews make up about 10% of city residents.
On June 3, 2025, the NYPD reported that there were 24 “reported” hate crimes in the city. The city is now referring to that 24 number as “confirmed,” which suggests that 100% of the reported anti-Jewish hate crimes in the city in May 2025 were subsequently confirmed.
That is not the case with other categories. In May 2025, two of three anti-Asian hate crime reports were confirmed, as were five out of six reports of anti-black hate crimes, according to city data. One of two gender-based reported hate crimes was confirmed, and in total, according to NYPD data, 39 of the 42 reported hate crimes in New York City in May 2025 have been confirmed subsequently.
If NYPD shared with the public that there were 24 “reported” hate crimes targeting Jews in New York City in May 2025, all of which were confirmed, and that last month, the total number of “confirmed” and “reported” hate crimes targeting Jews was 101, it would then reveal that total reports of anti-Jewish hate crimes in the city was up 150%, compared to the prior year.
The 60 “reported” anti-Jewish hate crimes in New York City in May 2026 include the 41 “confirmed” hate crimes targeting Jews, the NYPD told JNS. The department didn’t say why it reported the percentage increase in “confirmed” anti-Jewish hate crimes but not in “reported” anti-Jewish hate crimes.
Rafael Mangual, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor of its City Journal who studies urban crime, told JNS that the NYPD is right to use the number of “confirmed” hate crimes.
“The way it is doing it now makes more sense” and is “more standardized” with how other departments report the data, he said. “The initial report is really just a matter of how many boxes did the initial set of validations from the complainant check off.”
Comparing months to the corresponding time period the prior year isn’t especially helpful when it comes to hate crimes, according to Mangual, who thinks that the numbers are so small that random chance could be playing a role. The year-to-date number tells a more clear story, he told JNS.
He added that it is alarming that such a large percentage of religion-based hate crimes target Jews given how many Jews live in the city.
Mark Goldfeder, a professor at Touro Law Center and director of its clinic on Jew-hatred, told JNS that “the development is still deeply serious.”
“On NYPD’s own confirmed numbers, anti-Jewish hate crimes rose 70.8% year over year in May,” Goldfeder, who also directs the National Jewish Advocacy Center, told JNS. “On the broader reported numbers, if compared to the way NYPD presented the data last year, anti-Jewish hate-crime reports rose from 24 to 60, which is a 150% increase. Either way, the signal is unmistakable. Jews remain the leading target of hate crimes in New York City by a staggering margin, and the trend is moving in the wrong direction.”
“The methodological change is also important,” he said. “Separating reported from confirmed incidents may improve transparency, but it can also make year-over-year comparisons harder unless NYPD clearly explains which number it is comparing to prior years. The public should not have to guess whether ‘reported,’ ‘investigated’ and ‘confirmed’ are being used consistently across releases.”
“For communities trying to understand risk, clarity matters almost as much as the raw number,” he told JNS. “The bottom line is that Jewish hate crimes are not a marginal category in New York City. They are the dominant hate-crime category, and the city needs to treat them with the urgency the numbers demand.”
NYPD data also show discrepancies in prior months. On May 4, the city said that 30 “confirmed” hate crimes, of 38 “reported” ones, targeted Jews in the city in April 2026. It said that in April 2025, there were 43 “confirmed” anti-Jewish hate crimes in the city. On May 7, 2025, though, the NYPD said that 41 “reported” hate crimes targeted Jews in that April, meaning that the NYPD has now confirmed two more anti-Jewish hate crimes in April 2025 than the total number reported as of early May last year. Last month, the NYPD said that amounted to a 30.2% decrease in “confirmed” anti-Jewish hate crimes. If it used the “reported” statistic, the decrease would be significantly smaller—about 11.6%
On April 2, NYPD said that 32 “confirmed” hate crimes out of 42 “reported” ones targeted Jews in the city in March, which it called an 11% decrease from 36 such “confirmed” incidents in March 2025. On April 3, 2025, the department said that 39 “reported” hate crimes targeted Jews. That would be a 7.7% increase in reported such incidents, rather than an 11% decrease.
On March 2, the NYPD said that 21 “confirmed” hate crimes targeted Jews in the city in February, and for the first time, it said it wasn’t sharing “reported” data. It didn’t share a percentage increase. On March 3, 2025, the department said that 28 reported hate crimes targeted Jews.
And on Feb. 2, the NYPD said that 31 “reported” anti-Jewish hate crimes targeted Jews the prior month, a 182% increase over the 11 reported in January 2025. On Feb. 4, 2025, the NYPD said that 18 “reported” hate crimes targeted Jews, suggesting that seven of those reports were downgraded in the following year.
Last month, five hate crimes in the city targeted Muslims, or about 7%, per NYPD data.
The department also said that 60 of the 98 (61%) “reported” hate crimes in the city targeted Jews last month, and that five (about 5%) targeted Muslims.
