Los Angeles recorded 46 anti-Jewish hate crimes from Jan. 1 to May 31 this year, according to Dara Hamilton, a detective who coordinates hate crime response for the Los Angeles Police Department.
As of the end of May, the LAPD tracked 281 hate crimes across all bias categories this year, including 50 aggravated assaults. A public breakdown of those incidents has yet to be released. The department reported 98 anti-Jewish hate crimes in 2025, Hamilton told JNS.
The statistics in the first five months of 2026, in which Los Angeles is averaging 9.2 anti-Jewish hate crimes monthly, suggest that the city is on pace to record more than 110 anti-Jewish hate crimes this year, or about a 12% increase.
Last year, the city averaged almost 8.2 hate crimes monthly.
Jewish organizations in Los Angeles urged city lawmakers to pass legislation that would create buffer zones around houses of worship.
Vlad Khaykin, executive vice president of social impact and North American partnerships at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told JNS that the 12% increase indicates not just growing hostility toward Jews but a “warning sign for society as a whole.”
“The targeting of Jews is rarely an isolated phenomenon,” he said. “It is frequently an early indicator of deeper social pathologies that ultimately threaten the security, rights and well-being of all communities.”
The hate crimes data is “not just a call to action for officials but a test for all of us,” according to Khaykin.
“The real character of a community is revealed not by the presence of hate but by whether it allows that hate to settle quietly into the background or insists on facing it before it becomes part of the city’s story,” he told JNS.
The Anti-Defamation League reported 817 anti-Jewish incidents statewide last year, including 322 in the city of Los Angeles.
Hamilton, of the LAPD, told JNS that the department’s figures reflect incidents investigated as hate crimes, regardless of whether charges were filed or convictions obtained. The ADL’s annual audit also includes noncriminal incidents, such as harassment and vandalism.
“We communicate and work with the ADL, the Jewish Federation, Magen Am and many more Jewish organizations and institutions,” Hamilton told JNS. “I also have a couple of LAPD reserve officers who assist me, one of whom is Jewish.”
“We regularly organize extra patrols at the synagogues,” Hamilton added.
The LAPD does not offer Hebrew versions of its hate crimes informational pamphlets. It provides materials in several other languages, including Arabic, Armenian, Korean and Tagalog.
Hamilton told JNS that the department has Hebrew-speaking employees who can assist officers and investigators when needed. “In addition, we contract with a third-party language bank for calls that patrol receives,” she said.
Jewish California, which includes 43 member organizations, advised Jewish Democratic state Assembly member Rebecca Bauer-Kahan in authoring the Safe Worship Zone Act, which would establish a 100-foot “buffer zone” around houses of worship.
AB 2664 passed in the state Assembly in May and was referred to the state Senate’s public safety committee on June 3.
David Bocarsly, CEO of Jewish California, told JNS that the measure is based on legislation that has existed in Colorado for more than 30 years.
Inside the 100-foot zone, it would be unlawful for people to approach a pedestrian or driver within eight feet without consent to hand out a leaflet or handbill, display a sign or “engage in oral protest or education or to harass, obstruct, threaten or intimidate the person,” according to the bill.
The measure was proposed in response to high-profile incidents in California, including a December 2025 protest outside Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles that led to two arrests for vandalism and battery, and a protest outside Adas Torah synagogue on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles on June 23, 2024, which escalated to violence, according to Bocarsly.
“This is a growing trend of protests and attacks at houses of worship and feelings of insecurity at houses of worship, so we realized that this was becoming more of a problem and we decided to write a bill,” he told JNS.
Legal experts consulted on the bill advised that it should use existing case law upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, according to Bocarsly.
Hate crimes are trending downward across California, but anti-Jewish hate crimes continue to rise statewide, he said.
“We make up 3% of the state’s population, and yet we are subject to the second most number of hate crimes, after the black community,” Bocarsly told JNS. “It is scary to be visibly Jewish these days.”
He added that the bill was developed with a broad coalition of faith communities.
The state Senate’s committee hearing on the bill is slated for June 16, and Bocarsly expects anti-Israel organizations, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, to testify against the measure.
“There are six members of the committee,” he said. “We need four votes to pass.”
Roz Rothstein, co-founder and CEO of StandWithUs, told JNS that hate crimes in Los Angeles “remain at historically high levels and continue to rise.”
Rothstein urged lawmakers to pass the bill.
“The bill helps ensure that all Californians can pray and gather in safety and peace,” she told JNS. “At a time when intimidation and harassment increasingly and particularly target Jewish communities, this measure sends a clear message that protecting the right to worship free from fear is a shared value.”
“True safety cannot end at the doors of synagogues and other places of worship,” she added. “This legislation is an important step, but the broader goal must be ensuring that all Jews, and all Californians, can live openly and safely wherever they are.”
