(The Center Square) — New York City’s top cop is defending the NYPD’s decision to change how it reports hate crimes after a spike in reported incidents targeting Jews and Muslims over the past year.
Under the changes, announced earlier this week, the New York City Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force said it will only include “confirmed” hate crimes in its monthly report and not cases that are under investigation.
The new rules follow an NYPD report showing that the number of hate crime crimes spiked by more than 152% in February over the previous month, a surge the agency was driven largely by a spike in anti-Jewish hate crimes.
In a public hearing on Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s proposed budget Wednesday, NYPD Commissioner defended the policy change and argued that the new process will be more transparent and provide a more accurate account of the number of hate crimes in the city. She said hate crimes data reported under the previous system was flawed and “not “a reflection of reality.”
Council Speaker Julie Menin told Tisch in remarks during the hearing that the council is “very concerned” about the rise and hate crimes in New York City, specifically those targeting Jews and Muslims, and said she was concerned that the changes could mean less transparency in reported incidents.
“We are hearing time and time again from New Yorkers that hate crimes are actually underreported, because some victims of hate crimes for many reasons do not report it,” Menin, a Democrat, said during Wednesday’s hearing.
“I believe in transparency, but I also believe that the numbers the NYPD was previously reporting were conflicting, wrong and confusing,” Tisch told the council. “What we should be reporting, in my opinion, is confirmed incidents of hate crimes.”
Tisch said under the previous system, the monthly NYPD hate crimes data included reports of hate crimes that police detectives hadn’t even had a chance to investigate. Some reports of hate crimes don’t pan out after investigators speak to witnesses and review the incidents, she said, while in other cases they might uncover a hate crime as part of another investigation.
“That number was not a reflection of any reality,” she said of the NYPD’s previous monthly estimates. “This was done in an effort to more accurately reflect the reality of hate crimes in New York City.”
Tisch lauded the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force as the nation’s “premier investigative unit” for bias and hate crimes, and said the police department also conducts community based follow ups with victims of alleged crimes as part of those investigations.
The changes to the NYPD’s new reporting methodology came after the NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force reported 58 bias crimes citywide in February, marking a 152% increase over the previous month. There were 31 hate crimes targeting Jewish people that month, a 182% increase, according to the report.
Wrangling over the hate crimes data comes as Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, tries to overcome criticism on the campaign trail stemming from his previous remarks about support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel and past rhetoric about Israeli government. The Anti-Defamation League has set up a “Mamdani monitor” to keep a check on his new administration.
A Mamdani spokesperson said the mayor’s office was not involved in NYPD’s decision to change how the hate crimes data is reported.
