Antisemitism, anti-Muslim attacks, and violence against disabled Pennsylvanians reach unprecedented highs while most counties don’t report data

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania is experiencing a hate crime crisis that officials say has reached the worst levels in state history, with violent attacks motivated by antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism, and bias against disabled and LGBTQ+ individuals spiking across the Commonwealth.

The alarming assessment comes from the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission’s newly released 2024 “No Hate in Our State” report, which documents what PHRC Chair Joel Bolstein describes as an unprecedented surge: “Antisemitism, Islamophobia, AAPI hate, LGBTQ+ hate and more are all at record levels.” Pennsylvania State Police data shows hate crimes more than doubled between 2020 and 2021, jumping from 142 incidents to 284—the highest annual total ever recorded in the state. Federal prosecutors have responded with aggressive enforcement, pursuing cases that reveal shocking brutality, including coordinated attacks on disabled victims who couldn’t report their own abuse and online threats depicting mass shootings at synagogues.

Attacks on the Most Vulnerable

The violence extends across categories and communities. In one of the most disturbing cases, two healthcare workers at a Pennsylvania facility for disabled residents planned and executed a months-long campaign of torture against their patients. The men texted each other about their hatred of residents with severe intellectual and physical disabilities, then systematically punched, kicked, and jumped on victims while spraying hand sanitizer and mouthwash into their eyes and mouths. They filmed the attacks and encouraged each other to escalate the abuse. One defendant received a 10-year federal prison sentence; the other got 17 years. Many victims were non-verbal and unable to report what was happening to them—a vulnerability the attackers exploited with apparent sadism.

Antisemitic Threats Persist

Antisemitic violence has intensified particularly in Pittsburgh, still reeling from the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue massacre that killed eleven people in the deadliest attack on Jewish Americans in U.S. history. Multiple residents have been prosecuted for vandalizing Jewish properties, while a California woman was sentenced to federal prison for making repeated antisemitic death threats to the synagogue’s former executive director. In Carbon County’s Lehighton, a man faces charges for posting online content calling for genocide against Jews, Black people, and Muslims, including a digitally altered image showing himself aiming an AR-15 rifle at Jewish men praying in a synagogue. The post appeared on March 13, 2019—just five months after the Tree of Life massacre.

A Broken Tracking System

Yet even as hate crimes reach crisis levels, Pennsylvania’s tracking system is failing spectacularly. Most counties don’t report their hate crimes to state police at all, making the official statistics—already alarming—likely a severe undercount of the actual problem. When a newspaper requested detailed data to analyze patterns like white-on-Black hate crimes, state police demanded $6,000 for staff time to access their own database, then claimed only a third-party vendor could retrieve the information even though state servers physically house the data. Court records show very few hate crime charges result in convictions under Pennsylvania’s “ethnic intimidation” law. The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, celebrating its 70th anniversary in 2025, can investigate civil discrimination but has no authority over criminal hate crimes—creating a fractured enforcement system where accountability remains elusive. PHRC Executive Director Chad Dion Lassiter framed the challenge simply: “The only thing we can do to end discrimination and hate is to open a seat at the table of our Beloved Community to everyone.” But with inadequate data, inconsistent reporting, and most hate crimes going unprosecuted, Pennsylvania may not even know the true scope of the problem it’s trying to solve. Pennsylvanians who face discrimination can file complaints with the PHRC at 717-787-4410, while hate crime emergencies should be reported to 911 or local police departments immediately.