Top city cop Jessica Tisch on Tuesday vowed the NYPD would fight antisemitism “no matter where the threats originate” – and slammed many of the anti-Israel protests at local colleges as “especially despicable.”
The NYPD commissioner delivered her powerful remarks during the Anti-Defamation League’s “Never Is Now Summit,” where she condemned “anti-Jewish hate that was on full display” in the city after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack on Israel that led to the Gaza war.
“As your police commissioner, I promise that the NYPD will continue to combat antisemitism no matter where the threats originate, and our hate crimes task force will remain on the front lines of this fight,” she said.
“We at the NYPD have the backing of everyday New Yorkers who know that the most diverse city on the planet must be and will be a place where everyone can live and work and worship free from fear.”
Tisch, who is Jewish and started as police commissioner last year, slammed many of the city’s anti-Israel protests over the past 17 months, when antisemitic symbols were plastered to walls and hateful slogans were chanted.
She said the hate “shook the foundations of what we thought being Jewish in New York City meant.”
Tisch had even more pointed rhetoric for many of the protesters who demonstrated on college campuses, events she described as “especially despicable.
“Jewish students were harassed, intimidated and threatened. Buildings were ransacked, and campus life was completely upended,” she said, adding many protesters directed ire toward Jewish New Yorkers and not Israeli policies.
Big Apple colleges such as Columbia have been an epicenter for hateful anti-Israel demonstrations, including when protesters occupied a green space and even a school building last year at the elite university until the NYPD intervened.
Last week, anti-Israel protesters stormed a Barnard College academic building in Manhattan and assaulted a college worker.
Tisch made it clear that even if the rhetoric from protesters is “vile,” the NYPD still has a constitutional duty to protect free speech during rallies.
But anyone who commits a hate crime will face justice, she warned.
Tisch mentioned that a Canadian ISIS supporter was arrested by a Joint Terrorism Task Force for allegedly plotting to shoot up a Brooklyn Jewish center on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack last year and a Utah man was arrested last month for allegedly threatened a Big Apple synagogue.
Hate crimes against New York Jews skyrocketed in 2023 after Oct. 7 and in 2024, Tisch noted.
There have been 47 antisemitic incidents in the city in 2025 through March 2 — or four more compared to the same time span last year, NYPD data shows.
