The short version: Hate crimes are one of the only major categories rising in New York City right now. The latest NYPD CompStat report — covering the week of May 11 through May 17, 2026 — shows hate crime complaints up across every time window the department tracks, even as murders, robberies, and burglaries fall to multi-year lows. If you have wondered whether the “crime is down” headlines apply to you, this is the category where the answer is more complicated — and where your own awareness matters most.
What the newest numbers actually say
Here is what the May 11–17 citywide CompStat report records for bias-motivated crimes, with the prior-year figure next to each so you can see the direction of travel:
- This week: 15 hate crimes, up from 10 in the same week of 2025 — a 50% increase.
- Past 28 days: 69 hate crimes, up from 49 last year — a 40.8% increase.
- Year to date (Jan 1 through May 17): 243 hate crimes, up from 228 in 2025 — a 6.6% increase.
Read those three numbers together and a pattern emerges. The year-to-date rise is modest — about 7% — but the most recent four weeks are running far hotter than the year as a whole. In plain terms: the gap widened recently. Whatever was driving a single-digit annual increase accelerated over the past month.
Why this stands out from everything else in the report
To understand why a 6.6% year-to-date rise is worth your attention, you have to see what it is sitting next to. In the same report, almost every other major crime category is moving the opposite way for the year:
- Murder: down 25.2% year to date (89 vs. 119)
- Robbery: down 10.5% year to date (4,682 vs. 5,231)
- Burglary: down 19.2% year to date (3,927 vs. 4,858)
- Grand larceny auto: down 10.0% year to date (4,218 vs. 4,688)
- Shooting victims: down 9.9% year to date (254 vs. 282)
- Overall index crime: down 6.23% year to date (40,403 vs. 43,088)
So when you read that “crime is down in New York” this spring, the data backs that up — for most categories. Hate crime is the conspicuous exception. It is rising while the city as a whole is getting safer by nearly every other measure. That divergence is the entire story, and it is why this category deserves its own tracker rather than getting buried inside a citywide average.
What “hate crime” means here — and what it does not
The CompStat sheet lists a single line: “Hate Crimes.” That label hides a lot, so here is the translation. Under New York State law, a hate crime is not a separate offense by itself — it is a regular offense (an assault, a threat, vandalism, harassment) that prosecutors believe was committed because of the victim’s actual or perceived race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, gender, gender identity, disability, age, or sexual orientation. The bias is what elevates it.
That definition matters for how you read the number. A spray-painted slur on a synagogue, a shove on a subway platform accompanied by an ethnic threat, and a smashed storefront window with a bias note left behind can all land in the same “15 this week” figure. The category mixes property damage with violence, and it mixes incidents that frightened one person with incidents that frightened a whole community. The count alone cannot tell you which.
One more decoding note: hate crime totals are unusually sensitive to reporting. When communities feel safe contacting police — or when a high-profile incident prompts more people to come forward — the recorded number can rise even if underlying behavior is flat. A rising count can reflect more incidents, more reporting, or both. The honest answer from a single weekly sheet is that it cannot separate those threads, and anyone who tells you it definitively can is reading more into seven days of preliminary data than the data supports.
What this means for your daily decisions
This is the question the raw stat does not answer, so let us answer it directly: should this change how you move through the city?
For most residents on most days, no — 243 hate crimes over roughly 19 weeks across a city of 8.3 million people is a small number relative to the population, and the overall safety picture is improving. You do not need to reorganize your life around a 6.6% year-to-date increase.
But the value of a tracker like this is not panic — it is calibration. If you belong to a community that has historically been targeted, the recent four-week acceleration is a reasonable prompt to do a few low-cost things: know that bias incidents can be reported even when no physical injury occurred, keep a mental note of where the nearest precinct or a populated, well-lit space is along routes you walk at night, and understand that vandalism and threats — not just physical attacks — count and are worth reporting. Reporting is part of why the number exists at all; under-reported categories look artificially calm.
How to report a bias incident
If you experience or witness something you believe was motivated by bias, you can call 911 for an in-progress emergency. For non-emergencies, the NYPD operates a dedicated Hate Crime Task Force, and incidents can also be reported through 311. Documenting what you saw — time, location, exact words or symbols used, and any photos of property damage — gives investigators the detail that determines whether an incident is formally classified as bias-motivated. That classification is precisely what moves a case into the line you just read about.
The bottom line
New York is, by the weight of the numbers, having a notably safer year. Murders are at a level the city has rarely seen in the CompStat era, robberies and burglaries are down by double digits, and overall index crime has fallen more than 6% against last year. Hate crime is the category that refuses to follow that trend — up 6.6% for the year and running hotter over the past month. It is a small slice of total crime, but it is the slice moving in the wrong direction, and it is the one where individual awareness and willingness to report have the most direct effect on whether the count reflects reality. That is worth knowing, without losing sight of the larger and genuinely encouraging picture.
Source: NYPD CompStat Citywide Report, Volume 33 Number 20, covering the week of May 11–17, 2026, published by the NYPD CompStat Unit. View the current citywide report at the NYPD Crime Statistics page or the live dashboard at CompStat 2.0. Figures are preliminary and subject to revision. Statistics reflect New York State Penal Law definitions.
