Hate crimes in New York City have surged over the past year, with attacks targeting Jews continuing to drive the increase, according to new crime statistics released by the New York Police Department, even as the city recorded its safest summer since crime statistics began being tracked.
The figures show a 15.8% increase in confirmed hate crimes citywide. During the first eight months of 2026, 425 incidents were recorded, compared with 367 during the same period in 2025.
Anti-Jewish hate crimes rose 8%, accounting for more than half of all confirmed hate crimes during the first eight months of the year, even though Jewish New Yorkers make up only about 10% of the city's population. The cases included several violent incidents that drew widespread attention, among them the July stabbing of a Jewish man after he left a synagogue on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
Local Jewish leaders have blamed Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his fierce anti-Israel rhetoric for the sharp rise in antisemitic attacks. Among other things, they have pointed to Mamdani's accusations that Israel is committing "genocide" in Gaza and his calls for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be arrested.
Following the July attack, the US Justice Department under the Trump administration sent Mamdani a letter demanding answers regarding what it described as the "unequal treatment" of Jews. The department also said it was "actively" investigating antisemitic hate crimes in New York. "The Department of Justice takes antisemitism extremely seriously," said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. "The king of antisemitism is none other than Mayor Mamdani," she added.
Jewish man punched in Midtown NYC as attacker spews antisemitic slurs https://t.co/W7l1bYLK7x pic.twitter.com/YmRDqtzOFO
— New York Post (@nypost) September 3, 2026
This week, the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors confronted Mamdani during a visit to a Jewish store in Brooklyn amid the rise in antisemitism across the city. "It's all because of you that we have so much antisemitism," pro-Israel activist Stephanie Benshimol shouted at the mayor. "Shame on you for coming to Borough Park, where my Bubby came after the Holocaust!"
Alongside the increase in hate crimes, New York recorded historic lows in violent crime this summer. Between June 1 and Aug. 31, the city saw the lowest number of shooting incidents, shooting victims and murders ever recorded during that period of the year. There were 195 shooting incidents over the summer, 32 fewer than the previous record low of 227, set last year. The number of shooting victims stood at 249, down 44 from the previous record low of 293, recorded in 2018.
Murders also declined. The city recorded 66 homicides this summer, 12 fewer than the previous record low of 78 in the summer of 2017. While the overall crime figures point to an exceptionally safe summer in New York, the hate-crime statistics tell a very different story.
