The New York City Police Department reported what it said was its safest January for gun violence in recorded history but admitted, at the end of a press release, that antisemitic hate crimes were up 182% in the city in January 2026 compared to January 2025.
Overall, the NYPD hate crimes task force investigated 152% more incidents last month (58) compared to January 2025 (23), including 31 anti-Jewish hate crimes last month compared to 11 in January 2025.
The antisemitic hate crimes “accounted for more than half of all the hate crime incidents in January,” the NYPD stated. About 10% of New Yorkers are estimated to be Jewish.
Scott Richman, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s New York region, called the one-year jump “staggering.”
“From swastikas at a playground in Borough Park to a car ramming at Chabad headquarters in Crown Heights, the Jewish community in New York City is very much on edge,” Richman told JNS.
“In the face of this, we urge Mayor Mamdani to quickly name the next head of the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism and to appoint a leader who will both represent this diverse Jewish community and confront all forms of antisemitism,” he said.
According to NYPD statistics, there were seven anti-Muslim incidents in January in the city, compared to zero in January 2025.
The 31 anti-Jewish incidents in January were much more than incidents that targeted or were related to Muslims (7), Asians (5), sexual orientation (5), religion (3), blacks (2), gender (2), age (1), Hispanics (1) and whites (1), per the NYPD.
Zohran Mamdani, who has called for the city to divest from Israel Bonds and has said he would have the Israeli prime minister arrested in the Big Apple, became mayor on Jan. 1.
Jessica Tisch, NYPD commissioner, stated that “for the first month of the year, the women and men of the NYPD delivered the fewest shooting incidents, victims and murders in recorded history.”
“These results show that this department remains focused on building on the historic public safety gains made last year. Our strategy is simple: don’t just get tough on crime, get smart,” Tisch said. “Deploy the best police officers in the nation to get it done and make New York safer.”
In January, NYPD recorded 47 victims in 40 shooting incidents, which was lower than what it said were all-time lows of 50 in 2025 and 56 in 2019. “Murders declined to their lowest level for January, shattering the previous record of 22 set in 2018 and 2022,” the department stated. “Manhattan and Staten Island went the entire month without a single murder.”
NYPD also said that retail theft was down 16% in January due to what it said was its “data-driven strategy” and that “school safety zones reduced overall crime by more than 50%.”
“These results drove an overall decline in major crime and continued the historic reductions achieved in 2025,” the NYPD said.
Reported rapes (167) were much higher in January that in prior years, including 2025 (157), 2024 (106), 2023 (135), 2022 (132) and 2021 (101), per the NYPD.
