NEWS

JCC threat a symptom of a rise in hate crimes

Gary Craig
@gcraig1

A downward trend of anti-Semitic crimes has apparently changed, with increases in the bias-driven incidents in 2016 and a recent spate this year of bomb threats and Jewish cemetery vandalism, experts say.

"2015 marked the end of ... a long-term decline in anti-Semitic hate crimes," Brian Levin, the director of the California-based Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism, said Tuesday.

On Tuesday, the Louis S. Wolk Jewish Community Center (JCC) of Greater Rochester was evacuated and shut down after an early-morning e-mailed bomb threat. That threat came only a week after vandals toppled headstones at a Jewish cemetery in northwest Rochester.

"When it hits close to home like this, it’s a reminder that even as robust as our Jewish community is here in Rochester, by no means are we immune to this,"  said Scott Fybush, a Brighton resident who is a member of the local JCC and whose great-grandfather is buried at the city cemetery that was targeted by vandals. "You'd like to think that in the 21st century we'd be beyond all this."

​The Rochester JCC was one of possibly a dozen or more Jewish-based facilities targeted with threats Tuesday, according to law enforcement officials. The FBI is assisting the Brighton police and State Police with the investigation into the local crimes.

"It definitely contributes to an atmosphere of stress, even if there's no actual violence," said Rachel Smookler, the rabbi at Temple Beth David.

The sense that hate crimes, including anti-Semitic offenses, are on the rise is more than anecdotal. For instance:

• There were 607 reported hate crimes in New York in 2016, almost a 20 percent increase from the previous year, according to preliminary data from the state Division of Criminal Justice Services. That number of incidents, however, is about average for nine years of reporting.

•  The Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism has studied four metropolitan areas — New York City, Chicago, Seattle, and Montgomery County, Maryland — and found year-to-year increases ranging from 20 percent to 42 percent from 2015 to 2016. (Much of the law enforcement data for 2016 is still unreported.)

• New York City has seen reported hate crimes increase almost 55 percent the first two months of 2017, when compared with the same time period last year. Those numbers include a 94 percent increase in reported anti-Semitic offenses, the New York City police reported this week.

• Anti-Muslim crimes, while still a small percentage of overall hate crimes, have increased significantly in recent years. In 2009 they represented less than 2 percent of the nation's reported hate crimes; by 2015, that percentage had more than doubled.  In 2015, there were 257 reported hate crimes against Muslims, a 67 percent increase from the previous year, according to the FBI.

Fybush has witnessed firsthand just how disruptive and troubling the local anti-Semitic threats can be.

"I grew up in that building," Fybush, 45, said of the Brighton-based JCC. "I spent a lot of time there as a kid. We never had  to worry about security. There were never police cars there."

Protocol in place

When the bomb threat came into an employee's email account on Tuesday morning, the Brighton police and JCC staff were ready.

The response was swift. About 75 members, there for early morning workouts and swims, were evacuated; cops and nitrate-sniffing dogs were brought in; every nook and cranny of the sprawling center — with its theater, fitness areas, child care center and pool — were checked for the presence of explosives.

The center reopened about four hours after the 6 a.m. threat. The search found nothing hazardous or out-of-the-ordinary.

But the readiness of the threat response checklist, and the ability to follow it meticulously, was telling: In the current environment, the Rochester-area JCC was prepared for just such a threat to come its way.

"It's the world we live in today," said Arnie Sohinki, the center's executive director.

The police and JCC  leadership have protocols for threat responses, and have met in recent months to ensure everybody knew just what to do should the time come.

"We've had open lines of communication," said Brighton Police Chief Mark Henderson. "We've talked about our procedures and plans."

The plans took on new urgency with the threats to dozens of JCCs across the country.

"We believe it's much larger than the town of Brighton," Henderson said. "We believe it's much larger than New York state. We have been working diligently since early January when JCCs started to receive threats across the country."

Motives difficult to pinpoint 

Just last week, federal authorities arrested Juan Thompson of the New York City area, alleging that he called in threats to eight JCCs. Thompson's motivation, prosecutors say, was the end of a romantic relationship; he allegedly tried to implicate his former girlfriend in the threats.

The allegations, if true, show the difficulty in pinpointing motivation for offenses.

Levin, of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism, said that the perpetrators of hate-based crimes fall into three categories: the ideologically driven, like anti-Semitic neo-Nazis; the psychologically troubled; and those driven by revenge or other less subjective motivations.

The current political environment has fostered incendiary debates about just what is driving the increase in hate crimes.

Some maintain that President Trump, by slowly separating himself from the likes of racists like David Duke, has energized individuals who harbor severe prejudice. Trump has condemned the recent threats, but only after chastising a Jewish reporter at a press conference who tried to inquire about the crimes.

Others see the threats as either the works of unhinged copycats or as efforts to undermine the Trump administration, painting it as a purveyor of hate.

Whatever the reason, the bigots now seem willing to act on their prejudice, whether it's based on religion, race, or sexuality.

Speaking of the continued threats against Jewish establishments, Levin said, "I don’t think there's a great groundswell as far as the number of anti-Semites. What I feel from studying this for some time is that those who are out there feel more emboldened.

"  ... This number of crimes that we're seeing … indicates to me that the core of these may be someone who's committed to undertaking more. What we worry about is that others may be emboldened  to act more definitively."

Officials react

The threats across the country have prompted response from elected and government officials.

At the behest of U.S. Sen.  Charles Schumer, D-NY, the Federal Communications Commission this week granted a waiver to JCCs, allowing them to unscramble anonymous phone numbers used in threats.

And Gov.  Andrew Cuomo, responding to the rising number of hate crimes in New York, established a State Police Hate Crime Unit, a "hate crime text line" for reporting, and state rewards of $5,000 for information leading to arrests and convictions in hate crimes.  He has also proposed a $25 million program to bolster security at religious institutions.

This week a Brooklyn man was arrested for allegedly scrawling hate-filled graffiti, including swastikas, in a Penn Station restroom. He faces felony hate crime charges — allegations that, Cuomo said in a statement, show "we have zero tolerance for these acts of bigotry, which stand in direct contrast to the values that we New Yorkers represent."

Levin said the future will bring more crimes, and more arrests. And, he said, he would not be surprised if one person is found to be responsible for multiple threats.

"We're now having a significant cluster of these phoned-in bomb threats," he said. "It will be interesting to see, once this person is apprehended, what their set of motivations were."

GCRAIG@Gannett.com