The Crown Heights riot was an important issue that was raised repeatedly on the campaign trail in the 1993 mayoral election . According to Edward S. Shapiro , politicians opposed to Mayor Dinkins used the word " pogrom " to characterize the riot in order to discredit the mayor 's response to the riot , writing " the controversy over how to define the Crown Heights riot was not merely an issue of semantics . " Rudy Giuliani , who would be elected as the next mayor of New York , referred to the Crown Heights riot as a " pogrom " on July 1 , 1993 , in a speech at Bay Ridge , Brooklyn : " You can use whatever word you want , but in fact for three days people were beaten up , people were sent to the hospital because they were Jewish . There 's no question that not enough was done about it by the city of New York . One definition of pogrom is violence where the state does n't do enough to prevent it . " Other political opponents to Dinkins used the term , including Ed Koch , who had been defeated by Dinkins in the 1989 Democratic mayoralty primary , and Andrew Stein , a candidate in the 1993 Democratic mayoral primary . The term had been used previously in 1991 by journalists such as A. M. Rosenthal in '' The New York Times '' and Eric Breindel in the '' New York Post '' , and politicians such as New York City Councilman Noach Dear and later by Judah Gribetz , president of the JCRC of New York . By September 1991 , it had become routine within Jewish circles to describe the riot as a pogrom . Some Jews continued to use this term for the riot a decade later , as shown by articles in publications such as '' Jewish Week '' , '' Jerusalem Post '' , '' The Forward '' and '' The Jewish Press '' ; others went further and called it " America 's Kristallnacht "
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Crown Heights riot