NYPD statistics show overall crime is down across New York City, but hate crimes are up
NEW YORK -- Overall crime is down in New York City, according to the NYPD, but some of the biggest increases are in hate crimes.
The NYPD released its monthly crime statistics Tuesday.
Overall crime is down 4.1% across the city. Compared to November 2022, murder, shootings, rape, robbery and grand larceny are all down, but transit crime, felony assaults and car thefts are up.
Hate crimes are up this month compared to the same time period last year -- 33%, with most cases involving victims targeted for being Black, Jewish, Muslim or LGBTQIA+.
Lilli Debode and her partner, Stephen Fanale, still get nervous when they leave their Manhattan apartment.
"Until now, I was not able to say that I'd ever experienced antisemitism," Debode said.
Surveillance video from November shows the couple walking into a Midtown building to hide in a resident's apartment. Moments later, a man follows them to the elevator, yelling "Die, Jews, die."
"There was nothing we did to really trigger the situation, which I think is what makes it kinda scary for me," Fanale said.
The couple says they initially noticed the man tearing down hostage posters on Fifth Avenue and stopped to watch him, then he turned around and started chasing them down the block.
"I was crying. I begging people for help," Debode said.
That's when a stranger kindly offered to let the Jewish couple hide in her apartment.
"Right after the doors closed, like, after a horror movie happened before our eyes, the woman asked, 'Are you guys Jewish, too?'" Debode said.
New data from the NYPD shows while total hate crimes in New York City are down for the whole of this year compared to last -- 574 in 2023 and 605 in 2022 -- when you compare this November to November 2022, hate crimes have risen 33% -- 96 this year and 72 last year.
The vast majority of those driven by antisemitic hate crimes -- 62 reported antisemitic hate crimes this year and 47 reported antisemitic hate crimes last year.
We've seen it in the forms of graffiti, threats and physical violence.
"Certainly, the Israel-Hamas war and people blaming Jews in this country or attacking Jews in this country as a way to make their feelings about the war known is a phenomenon that we're dealing with," said Scott Richmond, New York/New Jersey regional director for the Anti-Defamation League.
Richman says the war is exacerbating a dark data trend that the ADL has been tracking for years.
"This isn't just about the Jewish community. In the past decade, we've seen a marked rise in hate," he said.
"I think on the one hand, it's made people more fearful of the moment and what it might mean for the future," said Eric Goldstein, of the United Jewish Appeal Federation of New York. "On the other hand ... I think its motived the community in this moment to be very vocal and positively, proudly Jewish."
The NYPD is investigating what happened to Debode and Fanale as a possible biased incident.