Where's All The Hate In Bergen County?

BERGEN COUNTY, NJ — The New Jersey Attorney General's Office released a report on Friday listing the number of bias incidents in each town in the Garden State each year — and who they were biased toward.

In Bergen County, according to the report, 44 legitimate incidents of hateful acts or language against a particular racial, ethnic, or religious group were reported so far in 2024.

Twenty-four of the incidents were against Jews, the Attorney General's Office reported.

Ten were against the Black population, four were anti-Muslim, three were anti-Asian, and two were anti-gay (male) and one was anti-Lesbian. One was anti-white. The rest were against multiple groups.

Among the recent incidents in Bergen County, a swastika was found in a bathroom at a high school in the Ramapo-Indian Hills district, which welcomes students from three Bergen County towns.

Of note, Teaneck had a high number of bias incidents in 2023 and 2024, including 42 anti-Jewish incidents in both years, and seven anti-Black.

The state announced on Tuesday a new program to combat hateful rhetoric, "the Community Peacemaker Collaborative, a new initiative designed to respond to the rise in bias and hate in New Jersey, including the significant uptick in antisemitism and Islamophobia in recent months. DCR’s Community Relations Unit has received a $347,000, four-year federal grant through the United States Department of Justice’s Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Program to fund the initiative."

What About In Each Town?

So far in 2024, there were three reported bias incidents in Ridgewood: Three that were anti-Jewish, and one that was anti-Black.

In 2023, there were 23 reported incidents in that town, the state says: Seven anti-Jewish, 10 anti-Black, three anti-Latino, and two anti-gay. There was one anti-Asian incident, one anti-Muslim, and one-anti-mental disability.

The reports say there were 11 incidents in Mahwah in 2023 and 2024. As opposed to several nearby towns, there were no incidents reported that were classified as anti-Jewish. There were two each of incidents that were against the Black population.

Eight incidents were against members of the LGBTQ population, including two classified as anti-gay, two anti-lesbian, two anti-gay/lesbian/transgender, and two anti-transgender. There was one reported anti-Asian incident.

The AG released the numbers as part of a "bias dashboard" meant to track hate crimes.

As any student of history knows, a rise in hate crimes can signal a coming rise in violence. And such incidents aren't far in the past.

Five years ago, five people, including a mother of three, were killed near a Kosher grocery store in Jersey City in an antisemitic shooting spree.

'Upward Trend' In New Jersey

The attorney general's office said Friday, "Preliminary data for 2023 was released today, indicating that the upward trend in reported bias incidents has continued – with an initial showing of a 22 percent increase in reported incidents in 2023 compared to 2022. To help combat the rising tide of bias and hate, a public awareness bias campaign and an interactive bias data dashboard were also launched today"

The dashboard is here.

'The spread of misinformation and bias on social media platforms...'

The attorney General's Office broke down some of the numbers from 2021 to 2023, and gave several reasons why hate crimes and bias incidents appear to be on the rise, including misinformation on social media.

"The report released today finds that there were 2,211 bias incidents reported to law enforcement agencies throughout New Jersey in 2022," the office said Friday, "eclipsing the previous record of 1,885 set in 2021. The year 2022 was the seventh consecutive year that the number of reported bias incidents has risen in New Jersey.

"In both 2021 and 2022, Black individuals were the most frequent targets of bias incidents. The Jewish community was the religious group most frequently targeted, and the Hispanic or Latinx/e community was the ethnic group most frequently targeted. In 2021, residences were the most frequent locations of bias incidents, while in 2022 bias incidents most frequently occurred in elementary and secondary schools.

"The rise in reported bias incidents likely reflects a combination of statewide improvements in reporting and community outreach as well as other factors such as the spread of misinformation and bias on social media platforms, political divisiveness across the nation, and the lingering effects of backlash to the global racial justice movement that began in 2020, as indicated in the 2021-2022 report."

Members of the public are encouraged to report bias incidents to their local police departments, or via the NJBIAS online portal at https://bias.njcivilrights.gov, or by calling 800-277-BIAS.