NEW YORK (WCBS 880) -- The NYPD is trying to get to the bottom of why reported hate crimes doubled from last year to this year.
NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said more than 500 hate crimes have been reported in the city this year, a 100% increase from the previous year.
"Our arrests are up 106%. So on 503 incidents, we've made 249 arrests on that,” said Essig.
Essig said there were 129 anti-Asian hate crime reports compared to 28 in the same time period in 2020, 181 anti-Semitic reports, up 60 from 2020, and 85 anti-LGBTQ hate crimes, up from 29.
“Nothing is more important to us than these cases, that’s why they have higher penalties, because it’s not just about one person, it’s meant to attack an entire group or class,” said Essig.
The year, the NYPD enlisted a group of civilians to review these hate crime cases and make sure the right judgments are being made.
One of those civilians is activist Devorah Halberstam, who says of the 100 random cases they were given, they only disagreed with the NYPD’s call in two of them — one involved a partially drawn swastika on a Jewish doctor’s office.
“We considered the motivation factor in each of them, while impartially applying the rule of law as applicable,” said Halberstam.