Overview
- The NYPD logged 58 bias investigations in January, up 152% from a year earlier, with 31 targeting Jews and representing 54% of the total.
- Recent cases include a car ramming at Chabad’s 770 headquarters in Crown Heights, an assault on a rabbi in Queens, mass swastika graffiti at a Brooklyn playground, and a school email threat to kill Jews in Jackson Heights.
- Police arrested the Chabad crash suspect on hate-crime charges and charged a Queens student with making a terroristic threat and aggravated harassment; multiple Hate Crimes Task Force probes are ongoing.
- Officials caution the numbers can change as investigations proceed, and security experts say many incidents likely go unreported.
- The spike comes during Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first month as he revoked the city’s IHRA adoption, drawing political scrutiny, even as NYPD data show record-low January shootings and murders and overall major crime down 6.7%.