The Israel-Hamas war contributed significantly to a spike in anti-Jewish occurrences in October, which in turn led to an increase in hate crimes in New York City.
On Wednesday, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) revealed its monthly crime figures for October, which indicated a general decline in serious crimes in the Big Apple.
The five boroughs reported an increase in prejudice events that were looked at by the NYPD Hate Crime Task Force, despite a decline in crimes like shootings, murders, burglaries, and grand larcenies.
Police looked into 101 biassed incidents in October of 2022 as opposed to 45 during the same period in 2022, a 124% increase.
The task group looked into 22 anti-Jewish occurrences in October 2022 as well, but last month, that figure increased to 69, or 214% more.
October 2022 saw no recorded anti-Muslim events; nevertheless, records from last month show that the city looked into eight instances in total.
However, when year-to-date numbers are compared, the total number of hate crimes decreased. As of the end of October, 485 instances had been examined, down from 531 during the same period in the previous year.
According to the New York Post, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told reporters last month that since the confrontation between Israel and Hamas grew more intense on October 7, hate crimes had increased.
“Hate crime is still down, but since the incident in Gaza, there’s been an uptick,” he said, adding that hate crimes were still on a decline, year-to-date.
Kenney added that the majority of antisemitic incidents involved criminal mischief, aggravated harassment, and graffiti, adding that these offences border on free expression “until it takes a weird turn.”
The report contains other significant facts, such as an 8.1% decline in reported gunshot occurrences in October 2023 (79) from 86 in October 2022 (86). This continues the 25.7% decrease in shooting incidents so far this year (839 in 2023 versus 1,129 in 2022).
Between October 2022 and October 2023, there was an increase in crimes in the transit system from 211 to 223, or 5%, and in housing complexes from 470 to 521, or 10.9%.
