The number of reported crimes targeting Jewish and Israeli people in D.C. has increased over the past year, according to Metropolitan Police Department data. The spike coincides with Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, and the subsequent Israel-Hamas war in Gaza that continues today.
Despite the increase in reports of antisemitic hate, federal prosecutors pursue criminal hate crime charges in only a fraction of cases.
Last month, the United States Attorney’s Office for D.C., which handles most felony crimes, filed just its second federal hate crime case in the past year—an attack on a Jewish man in Foggy Bottom.
According to the indictment, Foggy Bottom resident Ariel Golfeyz was walking to work when he noticed a fist coming toward his face out of the corner of his eye. Golfeyz then felt his jaw crack before he fell to the ground.
“You are murdering innocent men, women, and children in Gaza,” his attacker shouted. “You control us with money,” the man, later identified by authorities as Walter James, continued to yell.
James proceeded to punch and kick Golfeyz until police officers stepped in and arrested him. He was charged and convicted under a federal hate crime statute and faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
Golfeyz, who was wearing a kippah (or yarmulke) at the time, has since said he is now afraid to walk around the city with any outward representation of his religious identity.
The USAO has published breakdowns of the 763 reported hate crimes (officially called “bias-related crimes” under D.C. law) from 2019 to 2023. MPD made arrests in 236 cases, about 30 percent. Of those 236 cases, federal prosecutors brought 169 charges, but only 37—about 4 percent of the total reports—were filed as hate crimes. (The USAO’s figures don’t include those cases that MPD sent to the Office of the Attorney General.)
In 2023 specifically, MPD received 150 reports of potential hate crimes—an increase over the previous year and the highest total since 2019. The department made arrests in 36 cases; federal prosecutors brought hate crime charges in just eight of them.
As of Aug. 31 of this year, MPD received 103 reports of hate crimes—a slight increase from the same time last year. MPD tells City Paper that it has closed 40 of those cases with an arrest.
While reports of hate crimes saw a significant decrease in the District in 2020, reports of crimes targeting Jewish and Israeli people have spiked in the past year following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the subsequent Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
The department received 35 reports of antisemitic hate crimes in 2023, topping the previous high of 31 in 2017, according to available data. That year, then-President Donald Trump announced the U.S. Embassy’s move to Jerusalem.
Large demonstrations as a result of the recent conflict in Gaza took place in the District in November 2023. The National March on Washington: Free Palestine convened at Freedom Plaza on Nov. 4, and tens of thousands of people came to the National Mall for the March for Israel on Nov. 14.
Most of the political fervor has been confined to peaceful protests, but in the two months following the Oct. 7 attacks, MPD received 14 reports of hate crimes directed at Jewish and Israeli people.
The department received three reports of crimes targeting Muslims, Palestinians, or Arab people in 2023. The first was on Oct. 6; the other two were on Oct. 12 and Dec. 6, respectively.
Student encampments protesting the war at George Washington University and other college campuses throughout the country in April and into May 2024 prompted outcry from Republican members of Congress, some of whom called the gatherings in D.C. “unlawful, antisemitic, and disruptive.”
Contrary to those claims, MPD did not receive any reports of antisemitism for the duration of the encampment at GWU, according to police data; the only reported act of antisemitism in May came several weeks after the encampment ended.
The District is not an outlier in this recent upward trend in antisemitic crimes. Reports have found that antisemitic incidents nationwide hit a record high of nearly 9,000 last year. A 2023 survey by the American Jewish Committee, a Jewish advocacy organization, determined that more than 90 percent of American Jews and nearly three-quarters of adults in the U.S. regard antisemitism as a serious problem.
Reported crimes targeting Muslims, Palestinians, and Arabic people increased from three in 2023 to six so far this year. In April, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said it received the highest number anti-Muslim bias complaints in its 30-year history. The 8,061 complaints from across the country include reports of employment bias as well as hate crimes, which made up 7.5 percent of complaints.
This year, the USAO has prosecuted only two federal hate crime cases—both alleged acts of antisemitism. The office drew criticism in 2019 following a Washington Post investigation that revealed the deep disparity between reported hate crimes and prosecutions of them.
Unlike the federal law, which spells out individual hate crimes, the D.C. code doesn’t designate stand-alone hate crimes. Rather, it allows for other crimes to be prosecuted with a “bias-related” enhancement that allows judges to impose harsher sentences.
This year’s first federal hate crime indictment, handed down in August, accused Ohio resident Brent Wood of three counts of forceful religious obstruction. In Dec. 2023, Wood allegedly drove a U-Haul truck on the sidewalk in front of the Kesher Israel synagogue in Georgetown, and proceeded to spray aerosol on the congregants while yelling, “Gas the Jews!” Wood faces a maximum of 20 years in prison for each of the counts.
Although Jewish and Israeli people were most affected by hate crimes motivated by religion and ethnicity, the highest proportion of reported hate crimes were committed on the basis of the victim’s sexual orientation or gender expression.
Of the 150 hate crimes reported to MPD last year, more than 60 (40 percent) listed the motivating factor as sexual orientation or gender expression. Many attacks on members of the LGBTQIA community are not included in this count because of how difficult it is to prove that bias was a motivating factor in the crime.
Last month, for example, a jury in D.C. found Jerry Tyree guilty of shooting Kayla Fowler, a transgender woman, in the genitals in November 2023. Federal prosecutors announced the conviction in a press release titled “Convicted Felon Found Guilty of Shooting a Transgender Victim,” yet the office did not charge Tyree with a hate crime.
According to evidence that the USAO presented in court, Fowler agreed to perform oral sex on Tyree for a price. After the act, Tyree accused Fowler of robbing him, which she denied, and Tyree then pulled out a silver pistol and shot her in the genitals. Tyree was found guilty of aggravated assault while armed and other gun and drug crimes.
A spokesperson for the USAO says that in order to file hate crime charges, prosecutors need a witness who can testify to the fact that a crime was motivated by bias.
Tyree maintained throughout the trial that he was not aware of the fact that Fowler was transgender, and no witnesses were able to confirm that his assault was motivated by her gender identity, so prosecutors were not able to charge him with a hate crime, according to the USAO.
Similarly, MPD officers arrested Chanae Ridian Watson on Sept. 23 after she threatened employees at a Chipotle in Columbia Heights. A police affidavit says Watson’s mother slipped on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, and Watson asked to speak to a manager. She eventually became “irate,” in part because two employees were speaking Spanish to each other, the affidavit says. Watson then started threatening to “shoot this bitch up,” and telling employees she would “come back and wait for you outside.”
Watson continued to yell: “You aren’t even born here, you are not a citizen,” and “this is America, learn English,” according to police, adding that she was going to vote for Donald Trump. MPD officers arrested Watson on suspicion of making threats to kidnap or injure a person, unlawful entry, and hate crime based on racial group animus. But the USAO only charged Watson with threats to do harm, and no hate-crime enhancement.
“I feel very unsafe, and every day, I and our team feel not safe coming to work,” one Chipotle employee told NBC Washington last month.
“We come here to work and support the country,” another employee told the station. “We do a lot of things that other people don’t want to do it, and they see how we work, but I feel unappreciated.”