More Than Half of NYC’s Hate Crimes Now Target Jews. The City’s Overall Crime Rate Just Hit a Record Low.
- 425 confirmed hate crimes citywide in the first eight months of 2026, up 15.8% from 367 over the same span in 2025 — NY Post / NYPD
- Over half of every confirmed hate crime in New York City in 2026 targets Jewish New Yorkers, who make up roughly 10% of the city's population — NYPD / Mayor's Office
- 70% of July 2026's confirmed hate crimes were anti-Jewish — 23 of 33 incidents, up from 15 the July before — NYPD
- 195 shootings, 66 murders citywide from June through August 2026 — record lows — even as antisemitic hate crimes kept climbing — NYPD / JTA
On the afternoon of August 14, 2026, roughly 375 people were at Shabbat services inside Central Synagogue on East 55th Street in Manhattan when a man walked in, disrupted the service, and began attacking congregants. By the time it was over, a 63-year-old woman had been punched, a pair of ceremonial silver candlesticks lay damaged, and a security guard restraining the intruder had been headbutted, spat on, and called a racial slur.
That attack is now one data point in a citywide count that NYPD figures show has been rising for most of 2026 — even as New York recorded its safest summer for violent crime in decades. Confirmed hate crimes citywide are up nearly 16% year over year through August, and antisemitic incidents alone now account for more than half of every confirmed hate crime in the five boroughs, despite Jewish New Yorkers making up roughly one-tenth of the city’s population.
NYPD identified the man as Larry Montes, 46, of the Bronx. He was arrested at the scene and charged the next day, August 15, with state hate crimes. Three days later, on August 18-19, the Justice Department’s Southern District of New York office announced federal hate-crime charges as well — exposing Montes to up to 10 years in prison per count, and up to 20 years on the count tied to damaging religious property. Montes is a defendant, not a convicted offender; both the state and federal cases remain pending, and he is presumed innocent unless and until a court finds otherwise.
It was not an isolated incident. Three weeks earlier, on July 23, a Jewish man was stabbed with a screwdriver on the Upper West Side, after leaving Tisha B’Av services, by an attacker police say shouted “Allahu Akbar” during the assault; the suspect has been charged with attempted murder and a hate crime and is likewise presumed innocent pending trial. That same month, two Queens synagogues were vandalized with motor oil and feces. Earlier in the year, 57 swastikas were found drawn across a Borough Park playground, and a vehicle rammed into Chabad-Lubavitch’s Crown Heights headquarters.
NYPD arrested Larry Montes, a 46-year-old Bronx man, and charged him with two counts of assault as a hate crime following yesterday's disturbing attack at Central Synagogue. There is no place for hate in our city.
The attack at Manhattan's Central Synagogue is a direct result of Mayor Mamdani's sustained campaign of incitement. I warned that words would turn into actions, and that is exactly what is happening. Mamdani has failed to protect New York's Jews.
NYPD’s own data shows the pattern held steady across nearly every checkpoint of the year, not just in the aftermath of a single high-profile attack. In the first quarter of 2026, the department confirmed 143 hate crimes citywide, 78 of them — 55% — anti-Jewish. May alone brought 41 confirmed antisemitic incidents, a 71% jump from May 2025, making up 60% of that month’s hate crimes. By the midyear mark, the citywide total stood at 325 confirmed hate crimes, with 181, or 56%, targeting Jewish New Yorkers.
The trend sharpened, rather than eased, heading into late summer. Through the first seven months of 2026, NYPD confirmed 360 hate crimes citywide, up 9.4% from 329 over the same span in 2025; of those, 205 were anti-Jewish, up 8.5% from 189 — 56.9% of the citywide total. July alone was the starkest single month: 33 confirmed hate crimes, 23 of them anti-Jewish, a 70% share that was up 53.3% from the 15 antisemitic incidents confirmed in July 2025.
Other groups also saw confirmed incidents rise. Year to date, NYPD has confirmed 26 hate crimes targeting Muslim New Yorkers, up 62.5% from 16; 18 targeting Black New Yorkers; 9 targeting Asian New Yorkers; and 34 based on sexual orientation. Brooklyn South — the patrol borough covering Park Slope, Sunset Park, Borough Park, Bay Ridge, and Coney Island — recorded the highest concentration of hate crimes citywide, followed by Manhattan South and Queens North.
The numbers above carry an accountability wrinkle of their own. NYPD changed how it reports hate crimes twice in 2026. After January’s raw complaint total spiked 152% year over year, the department announced in March that it would report only “confirmed” hate crimes — incidents that have cleared a full investigation — rather than every complaint logged at intake. Hate-crime researchers told Gothamist the switch looked like it would understate the true scale of the problem, since raw reports typically run well above confirmed totals.
After that reporting, NYPD reversed course in April and began publishing both figures side by side — reported and confirmed. Commissioner Jessica Tisch called the dual disclosure the “gold standard” for hate-crime transparency. Every topline figure in this story uses NYPD’s confirmed count, the standard the department has published consistently since April — a real fix, but one that only followed public pressure over a two-month stretch where the fuller picture briefly went missing.
The hate-crime trend is unusual precisely because it runs against the city’s broader crime numbers. The same summer that antisemitic incidents kept climbing, NYPD recorded a record-low season for violent crime overall: 195 shootings between June and August 2026, down from 227 in the summer of 2025, itself a record; and 66 murders over that span, below the prior record low of 78 set in 2017. By nearly every conventional measure, New York City had one of its safest summers in its modern history — while hate crimes against its Jewish residents kept rising.
Rabbi Mark Schneier, president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, described the mood inside the community bluntly:
“The Jewish community is filled with anxiety and trepidation. We know that it's open season.”
Rabbi Mark Schneier, President, Foundation for Ethnic Understanding
At a July 2 briefing alongside Commissioner Tisch, Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D-NYC) named the imbalance directly: “While Jewish New Yorkers comprise only 10 percent of our city’s population, antisemitic hate crimes account for 55 percent of all confirmed hate crimes.” Tisch echoed the point in her own remarks: “Confirmed hate crimes increased nearly 8 percent citywide year to date,” and “more than half, or 55 percent, of hate crimes in New York City are antisemitic in nature, despite Jews only making up approximately 10 percent of the population.”
Mamdani’s FY27 city budget raised funding for the Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes from roughly $3,000,000 to roughly $26,000,000 — an increase of more than 800%. Council Speaker Julie Menin (D-NYC) said she remains “deeply concerned and very troubled by the unacceptable spike in hate crimes, particularly driven by those targeting Jewish New Yorkers.” Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) has committed $35,000,000 in FY27 state hate-crime security grants, bringing cumulative state funding since 2021 above $131,000,000, and is pushing a state law establishing a 25-foot buffer zone around houses of worship during protests. On the federal side, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the DOJ Civil Rights Division said of the Montes charges: “These charges serve as notice that DOJ will intervene to protect the public in antisemitic and racially motivated attacks.”
Not every response has come from City Hall or Albany. In February 2026, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, opened a federal oversight inquiry into the city’s antisemitism-policy response — a reminder that scrutiny of New York’s numbers has not been confined to City Council or the mayor’s own briefings.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D-NYC)— Publicly disclosed the data himself and raised the city’s hate-crime-prevention budget by more than 800% in his first budget cycle. He has not, however, been able to reverse the underlying trend: confirmed antisemitic incidents kept climbing through the summer his administration governed.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch— Presided over a March reporting change that briefly narrowed what the public saw, then reversed it in April after outside criticism and now publishes both reported and confirmed figures — what she calls the “gold standard.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) — Has directed more than $131,000,000 in cumulative state hate-crime security grants since 2021 and is pushing a synagogue-buffer-zone law, a real financial and legislative response running alongside the same rising numbers.
NYPD’s own confirmed-crime data shows two things happening in New York City at once: the safest summer for shootings and murders in decades, and a hate-crime count in which Jewish New Yorkers — roughly one-tenth of the city’s population — are the target of well over half of every confirmed incident, a share that climbed through 2026. City Hall and Albany have both put real money behind the response, and NYPD walked back a reporting change that briefly obscured the fuller picture. None of it has yet reversed the trend. The August 14 attack on Central Synagogue was not an outlier; it was one entry in a count that had been rising for eight straight months.
