“He knows how to get in and out of the police”: a candidate for law and order for mayor of New York

When the New York mayoral race began in earnest last year the city was still convinced of the murder of George Floyd and cries of “police diversion” came out of the Bronx at Battery Park.

Now, with Tuesday’s Democratic Party primaries approaching, Eric Adams – a former black cop who has asked for more NYPD officers – is one of the favorites to win the contest that has become a referendum on New York’s attitudes toward police and public safety.

Several surveys have shown Adams leader an overcrowded area as an increase in shooting and hate crimes has pushed public safety to the peak of voter concerns as the response to the coronavirus pandemic, once the main issue, disappears.

On the party’s moderate southern side, Adams is competing with businessman Andrew Yang and former head of the city’s sanitation department, Kathryn Garcia, as the campaign seems to take off later. All have proposed a number of reforms to improve the police, from better training to raising recruitment ages and imposing severe penalties on bad officers. However, they have rhetorically continued to support the police force and its role in the city, and have rejected progressive calls to reduce resources.

The situation is very bad. The city has almost politically refused to enforce quality of life crimes

“Nothing works in our city without public safety, and we need public safety police,” Yang said last month after a four-year-old girl in Times Square was shot in broad daylight.

Garcia, meanwhile, called the “diversion” serious, saying, “Black life matters, period … But we still need a safe police force.”

On the left is Maya Wiley, the former attorney general for Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has promised to remove $ 1 billion from the NYPD’s $ 6 billion budget and allocate it to social services. He has received numerous recent endorsements, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Bronx congresswoman and progressive star.

“Here’s the reality – we’re hiring police officers to do the work of social workers,” he said Wednesday night in a recent debate dominated by questions about public safety.

Jumaane Williams, a New York City advocate, said he felt compelled to support his campaign after concluding that voters were being given a false choice: between more police or more violence. “Police alone can’t, and have never, given public safety,” Williams said.

Another progressive candidate, former school official Dianne Morales, wants to take $ 3 billion from the police department and has claimed that the police made the city more dangerous.

In a formidable democratic city, Tuesday’s first-class winner will almost certainly hold a November general election and take charge of America’s largest city at a dangerous time, trying to recover from a pandemic that has killed more than 33,000 people and ruined trade and commerce. social fabric.

Anyone who wins, some analysts and observers have concluded that political winds have shifted in security.

“The pendulum went out to the defund movement, and I think it’s back now,” said Richard Aborn, chairman of the Citizens ’Crime Commission, a non-partisan group that campaigns for better policing. “I think the defense movement progressed in a short amount of time because the crime was very low.”

Alexander Reichl, a professor at CUNY Queens College, agreed that the crime had risen to “reshape” the mayor’s race: “The wind has taken them out of the sails of many progressives.”

Similar debates are taking place as a result of increasing crime in other U.S. cities. However, as Reichl saw it, it was a significant problem for New Yorkers, “because it was the long shadow of the 1970s and the fear of getting the city out of control.”

According to NYPD statistics, shootings rose 64% this year through the second week of June, compared to the same period a year ago, when the number also increased. Within 12 months, shootings have doubled compared to the previous 12 months. Murders rose 13 percent and hate crimes reported rose 117 percent.

There is no apparent fear in the numbers as Asian women are attacked on the sidewalks and the decline of neighborhoods is rooted in graffiti and other illegalities.

“The situation is very bad. The city has politically refused to enforce quality of life crimes, be it squeegee plagues, illegal traffickers, drug dealers on the corner, all the emotionally disturbed people among the homeless population, ”said William Bratton.

Bratton headed the police department under the command of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. When delinquency rates fell, housing prices rose and New York became “the safest big city in America.”

Bratton returned in 2014 during the first three years of the De Blasio administration. Crime continued to fall during the Bloomberg era when it reduced the aggressive “stop and speed” tactics that sowed so much resentment in the black and Hispanic communities.

Bratton attributed much of the recovery to criminal justice reforms approved by city and state politicians – including the removal of bail in exchange for many crimes. He also lamented that Minneapolis police in May 2020 had “violated” trust with communities of color in the Floyd assassination and other similar incidents.

“Whoever ends up elected mayor should be the first priority because he will seemingly get worse before he gets better,” he said.

Williams, for the public defender, ignores the role of the pandemic and the economic and social dislocation created while the courts closed. For those who advocate only incremental reforms, the Minneapolis Police Department has said it has made its own innovation before Floyd’s assassination.

“We need to restore public safety in a real way, because what we are doing is letting the police take all that responsibility and it doesn’t work,” he said.

The story of Adams ’political origins begins with police violence: As a growing teenager in Queens, his brother and two white police officers are beaten, his brother says. That experience, he says, led him to pursue a career in law enforcement to bring about change from within.

He retired at the captaincy level after a 22-year career. He founded the 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care group to enforce racism and build better relationships with the black community.

Adams ’campaign has shown a number of pitfalls, most notably about past fundraising practices and, more recently, about whether he’s a New Jersey resident. (No, he emphasizes.) He also has an unusual tendency to speak in the third person.

But his reputation as a pragmatist and salesman has reassured the city’s business elite. It has also been well positioned for the changing mood of crime. A few hours after the shooting in Times Square, he gave a press conference nearby.

“Gun violence,” he replied when asked what his first priority would be if elected mayor this week. “You’re seeing it again and again everywhere in our city.” He explained that the toll was humane, but also linked to the city’s economic recovery: “No tourists will come to this city if a three-year-old child is shot in Times Square.”

Among other changes, Adams has proposed hiring more colored officers and cutting red tape to send more police to neighborhoods. Somewhat controversial, wants to revive the special “anti-crime units” that were disbanded last year gun crime. He has refused to give up “stop-and-frisk” if used properly, at which point Wiley has repeatedly hit him.

“He knows how to get in and out of the police, and his advantage as a reformer is that he will understand what can be done, and he will be in a very good position to deny the idea of ​​what cannot be done,” Aborn said. Citizen Crime Commission.

Victoria Davis, her brother, Delrawn Small, was shot dead by a police officer in 2016 after a road rage accident in New York City and was not convinced. Davis accused Adams of “acting in fear” and mocked him as an “exit” [candidate] for whites who want to be progressive but don’t know how ”.

In the South Bronx, the neighborhood that has suffered the worst crime in New York in years, Ed Garcia Conde felt like a longtime neighbor and blogger dividing his neighbors into generational lines.

You have the older generation who want to “send troops” and do something about increasing gun violence, and then you want the younger generation to “divert” the police, ”Garcia Conde said.“ It will come down to whoever comes out to vote. ”