San Diego has long prided itself on tolerance and welcome. That reputation is now under direct assault — and the targets are our houses of worship.
The numbers are damning. Antisemitic incidents in San Diego County increased by 150% from 2024 to 2025, with the ADL documenting 139 incidents countywide — harassment, vandalism and assault — nearly quadrupling over five years.
Anti-Muslim hate incidents nationally reached a 30-year high in the same period. Anti-Sikh hate crimes surged to their highest levels ever recorded — even as overall hate crimes fell nationally — with a Sikh musician shot and killed outside a gurdwara in Alabama and a teenager beaten on a New York bus while someone tried to rip off his turban.
According to San Diego’s own 2025 crime statistics, religion accounted for 49% of all hate crimes committed in the city last year. So nearly every other hate crime in San Diego was an attack on faith.
These are not abstractions. A man was beaten downtown for speaking Hebrew. Swastikas defaced a high school campus. A Jewish fraternity at SDSU was vandalized. At a City Council meeting, a speaker looked at Jewish community members and said, “Look at all the well-dressed Jews here with money in their pockets.”
The Islamic Center of San Diego was flooded with hate flyers. A local imam reported that armed security is now required simply to hold Friday prayers. Sikh families are watching their gurdwaras become targets of a hatred many Americans cannot even name.
When parents are afraid to bring their children to a mosque, a synagogue or a gurdwara, it is not a community dispute. It is a public safety crisis.
I spent 35 years in law enforcement with the San Diego Sheriff’s Office, and later served as director of safety and security at Jewish Family Service of San Diego, protecting 17 facilities across three counties. I know what targeted hatred looks like before it becomes violence. It starts with surveillance. It starts with a masked figure filming a religious institution while yelling a slur. Those are not random acts. They are signals — and when institutions fail to act on signals, people get hurt.
Local law enforcement deserves credit for saying the right things. San Diego Police announced increased patrols around places of worship. The San Diego Sheriff’s Office states publicly that it actively monitors intelligence, works collaboratively to keep communities safe, and does not tolerate hate. Sheriff Kelly Martinez has said it directly, “We don’t tolerate hate in our communities.” The U.S. Attorney’s Office joined the San Diego Anti-Hate Coalition. The DA’s office has a dedicated hate crimes unit.
But words are not outcomes. They are inputs. The outcome is the data — and the data does not support the statements. The sheriff’s office maintains a hate crimes webpage — but publishes no clearance rates, no prosecution outcomes, no measurable accounting of results. Increased awareness is not the same as increased safety.
When law enforcement leaders declare zero tolerance while incidents keep climbing, the public is owed more than reassurance. It is owed results — documented investigations, prosecutorial follow-through and transparent public accounting of what is actually being done. Anything less is a press release, not a public safety strategy.
Civic leaders must move beyond resolutions. The San Diego City Council adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism in March — a meaningful step. But definitions without enforcement and funding are just words. Every elected official in this county must treat religiously motivated hate as a funded, measurable priority — not a talking point deployed before elections and forgotten after them.
And every resident must embrace the principle at the core of effective community policing: see something, say something. Hate does not begin with violence. It begins with a flyer, a slur, a suspicious figure casing a house of worship. When those signals go unreported, the window for prevention closes. When they are reported and acted upon — lives are saved.
What happens to one house of worship is a warning to all of them. No community should have to pray alone in fear.
See something. Say something. Mean it.
David A. Myers is a retired commander in the San Diego Sheriff’s Office with 35 years of service. He served as director of safety & security at Jewish Family Service of San Diego from 2023 to 2025.
