A month after changing the way it reports hate crimes, and only including “confirmed” ones rather than those still being probed, the New York City Police Department made another change in early April and now reports both “confirmed” and “reported” hate crimes.
Jessica Tisch, the NYPD commissioner, said on April 2 that the new, dual set of statistics was her decision, and not that of Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City. Mamdani is a frequent and harsh critic of Israel, and the city recorded a 182% increase in anti-Jewish hate in January, the first month of his mayoralty and the month before the city stopped reporting “reported” crimes.
The city’s reporting, even with the new dual format, requires residents to do their own math to understand how much anti-Jewish crimes are going up year-over-year in the city.
According to an NYPD hate crime dashboard, there were 63 “confirmed” incidents in the city, 36 (57%) of which targeted Jews, in March 2025. Two incidents (3%) targeted Muslims. JNS reported in April 2025, citing NYPD data at the time, that 31 (54%) of 57 incidents in the city in March 2025 targeted Jews according to one city source and that according to another, 39 (58%) of 67 incidents in the city targeted Jews.
As of March 29, NYPD data in 2026 stated that there were 51 hate crimes recorded in New York City so far that month.
On April 2, New York City stated that there were 55 “confirmed” hate crime incidents in the city in 2026, compared to 64 in 2025, which it said was a 14.1% decrease. It added that “confirmed” anti-Jewish hate crimes in the city dropped from 36 in 2025 to 32 in 2026, or an 11% decrease, and that anti-Muslim hate crimes went up 100% from two in 2025 to four in 2026.
The 32 anti-Jewish crimes were 58% of the total number and the anti-Muslim ones were 7% of the whole.
The city said that there were 42 (58%) reported anti-Jewish hate crimes and four (5%) reported anti-Muslim ones, out of a total of 73 reported incidents in March 2026. It wasn’t immediately clear if the “reported” number includes the “confirmed” number or if the city only includes an incident as “reported” if it was reported but not confirmed.
New York City reported the year to date numbers for hate crimes in both numbers and percentages, with a 1% increase in anti-Jewish incidents—from 77 in 2025 to 78 in 2026—and a 140% increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes, from five in 2025 to 12 in 2026.
Mamdani highlighted the anti-Muslim numbers.
“There is always more work to be done, as we can see in the 11.7% rise in hate crimes across our city, with the largest increase being of anti-Muslim hate crimes, a 140% increase,” he said. He added that “antisemitic hate crimes continue to comprise more than half of the total number.”
Tisch was asked about the nature of the hate crimes.
“The hate crimes that we are seeing are really, like, very across the board. It could be something—an act of violence. It could be drawing a symbol on a wall, like, for example, a swastika,” she said. “So, I don’t want to characterize them in that way.”
“What I can tell you is that the NYPD has released this month, the gold standard for data about hate crimes,” she said. “We’ve done this in consultation with experts in the field, and that is data about reported crimes and data about confirmed crimes.”
“Now everyone has access to both pieces of information, and that will continue into the future,” she said. “I want to make sure that we are incredibly transparent about data because data is power, and I also don’t want to continue or perpetuate the practice of releasing bad data that doesn’t help draw meaningful conclusions.”
Tisch said on April 2 that “we continue to see that the vast majority of our hate crimes are antisemitic in nature.”
“In fact, in the first quarter of 2026, more than half of all confirmed hate crimes, or 55%, were antisemitic, despite Jews only making up approximately 10% of the population of New York City,” she said. “These cases are investigated by the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force, which determines whether an incident meets the legal standard for hate crime under New York state law.”
“As of today, and for the first time, our monthly hate crime data will include two clear, accurate sets of numbers,” she said.
“Reported” hate crimes are incidents “flagged for investigation by the task force” and “confirmed” hate crimes are those that the task force determines as such, according to Tisch.
“That is the gold standard for reporting on hate crimes, and that is what we are going to do going forward,” Tisch said. “This will ensure that the public has an accurate and timely and more robust view than ever of hate crime activity in New York City.”
The Jewish commissioner added that in February, the change “was intended to fix how we were previously reporting hate crimes.”
“Given the inaccuracy of the previous reporting on reported hate crimes, I had decided to stop presenting data that way,” she said. “This was a decision that I made on my own, not in consultation with the mayor.”
