News

Anti-semitic hate crimes complaints in subway see dramatic rise

November 6, 2019 Jose Martinez THE CITY

An Orthodox Jewish man waits for a D train in Borough Park, Brooklyn on Nov. 4, 2019 Photo: by Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

Haters love an audience

That’s one more instance than in all of 2018 but more than double the number of swastika-related subway incident reports from 2013, even as overall subway crime this year has dipped a little more than 1 percent.

“People are emboldened and they want the largest possible audience for what they want to communicate,” said Alexander Rosemberg, director of community affairs for the Anti-Defamation League of New York and New Jersey. “And the subway is where they find that audience.”

Anti-Semitic grafitti and assaults on Jewish people accounted for close to 60 percent of the hate crimes in the subway in 2019, with the highest number of them occurring in Brooklyn. Many of the other hate crimes in the subway were anti-black or related to sexual orientation, according to the NYPD Transit Bureau.

Some subway riders in largely Jewish sections of Brooklyn said they’re alarmed at the increase, which comes as hate crimes in New York City overall have jumped in the last two years.

“I’m always concerned,” said Yehuda Chechik, of Borough Park. “Anti-Semitism rips the country apart.”

According to NYPD figures, Transit Districts 30 and 34, which extend across multiple subway lines and neighborhoods in Brooklyn, have had six anti-Jewish incidents this year, as has Transit District 20 in Queens. The NYPD did not provide THE CITY with case-by-case details or locations.

“I’ve noticed it more and had an incident a month ago,” said Rivkah Schen, who was waiting for an F train at the 18th Avenue stop in Borough Park. “Somebody got upset and started yelling at me on the train — the person noticed that I was Jewish.”

‘This is not a game’

The NYPD did not begin reporting the number of hate crimes to the MTA board until 2017, when 25 hate crimes against the Jewish community were reported. The change in policy followed years of prodding from Charles Moerdler, a then-MTA board member whose family fled Nazi Germany when he was a child.

“The people who do this are dead serious,” Moerdler said of perpetrators. “This is not a game for them.” Swastika sightings on trains also disrupt commutes.

On June 16, according to an internal incident report obtained by THE CITY, three trains on the No. 2 line were delayed because of graffiti that included a profanity and a swastika drawn in red and black marker. The train was taken out of service.

On January 29, C train service was slowed after a swastika was found on a subway car at 125th Street.

“Swastikas are jarring and triggering for anyone whose identity groups were targets of the original Nazis or the current inheritors of their ideology of racial purity,” said a Manhattan woman who tweeted photos to the MTA of a subway swastika.

“I was very impressed that the MTA took the train car out of service that very night until they could get rid of the swastika,” the 40-year-old woman told THE CITY. She asked that her name not be published out of fear of cyberharassment.

Moerdler said the increase in graffiti and words that attack Jews cannot be dismissed.

“Just saying, ‘Oh this is terrible!’ is not enough,” Moerdler said. “This is an expression of deep-seated antisocial behavior.”

Additional Reporting By Reuven Blau.

This story was originally published by THE CITY, an independent, nonprofit news organization dedicated to hard-hitting reporting that serves the people of New York.