The New York City Police Department said on Tuesday night that it is asking the public to help it identify two men, whom it suspects of two incidents that its hate crime task force is investigating as suspected Jew-hatred.
A man, who wore a white ball cap, shorts and a black coat, wrote “anti-Jewish remarks” and drew a Nazi swastika at a bus stop at the northeast corner of Lefferts Boulevard and Hillside Avenue, in Queens, on Aug. 27 at around 4:30 a.m., per the department.
The site is within several blocks of more than half a dozen synagogues.
The suspect, whom the department has yet to identify, faces a criminal mischief hate crime charge. He fled on foot at the time and traveled “southbound on Lefferts Boulevard to parts unknown,” the NYPD said.
On May 7, an attacker came up to a 39-year-old man at around 1 p.m. and “slapped the victim’s yarmulke causing the head covering to fall to the ground,” the NYPD said. The attacker, who is suspected of a hate crime, reportedly approached the victim from behind while the latter was trying to go into a business at 1 Whitehall Street in lower Manhattan not far from Wall Street.
That attacker, who wore a black ball cap, “fled the location on foot, traveling southbound on Whitehall Street to parts unknown,” the NYPD said.
Anti-Jewish hate crimes have surged in New York City since Zohran Mamdani became mayor in January. He has said that Israel is guilty of “genocide” and campaigned on jailing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, although he has more recently admitted that he lacks the authority to do so. His spokeswoman has also said that synagogues violated international law when they host pro-Israel events.
After recording a 182% increase in anti-Jewish hate crimes in the Big Apple in January, in Mamdani’s first month in office, the city began publishing only “confirmed” hate crimes and not “reported” ones in February. That suggested a decline, although it was hard to compare 2026 statistics with those from 2025.
In March, the city said that it would publish both “confirmed” and “reported” statistics separately each month. The city provides a comparison between “confirmed” 2026 statistics and the prior year, but not of “reported” hate crimes.
The city says that after an incident is flagged as a possible hate crime, the NYPD hate crime task force “investigates and determines, in consultation with the NYPD legal bureau, whether it constitutes a hate crime under New York state law.” If it meets that threshold, it’s called a “confirmed” hate crime. Disclosing both “confirmed” and “reported” hate crimes “enhances transparency and reflects best practices in hate crime reporting,” the NYPD says.
It wasn’t clear if the two incidents at the center of the NYPD announcement last night had previously been categorized as “confirmed” hate crimes, or whether that has changed.
Last month, Jews, who make up about 10% of New Yorkers, were targets of 42% of “confirmed” hate crimes in the city. That actually represented a slight decrease over August 2025, but Jewish leaders told JNS there is little comfort in the small drop leading up to the High Holidays given how frequently Jews are targeted.
