The uptick follows a national trend, in which activists and police are fielding more reports of hate crimes, which began last year. | AP Photo NYPD: Hate crimes rise in 2017, led by anti-Semitic incidents

There were 56 hate crimes reported in New York City as of Sunday, Feb. 12, up from just 31 incidents over the same time period last year, according to figures released today by the New York Police Department.

The increase was led by a rise in anti-Semitic crimes, which jumped from 13 to 28. No other category of hate crime was in double digits.


The uptick follows a national trend, in which activists and police are fielding more reports of hate crimes, which began last year. In early November, New York City police officials reported 314 hate crimes to that point in the year, surpassing the 309 that had been reported in all of 2015. (In one incident, an off-duty NYPD officer and Brooklyn native, who is Muslim, was attacked, along with her teenage son.)

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has said that uptick is linked to Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric. Police officials, who generally avoid wading into political debates, have said hate crimes ebb and flow in relation to high profile, national and international events — though they stopped short of connecting this to any particular remark from a specific public figure.

Last week, de Blasio and police officials unveiled figures showing overall crime continued to decline in the first month of 2017. At the event, NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce was asked about the uptick in hate crimes. He told reporters “that has now leveled off.”

Some critics cast doubt on local tallies of hate crimes, preferring the annual figures released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, since they apply one standard definition of a hate crime to incidents that take place throughout the nation’s various police districts.



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