Rikki Schlott: I'm Rikki Schlott with the New York Post and I'm here with Mayor Adams at Gracie Mansion. Thanks so much for having us.
Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you. Great to be here.
Schlott: So I want to start with something that's very important to a lot of New Yorkers, I think especially young women, including myself, which is public safety. And I'm curious to hear what you think in your tenure so far has been your biggest accomplishment.
Mayor Adams: Probably the gun violence. Gun violence is extremely important. It gives an indicator of how well your city is doing. And then when you do an analysis across the country, I was just looking at a story, actually in your paper, that showed in comparison to red states, blue states, you see how well New York is doing. New York is the safest big city in America.
And I think– I believe it was important to drive down gun violence. And that is the actual crime, but also the presence of disorder. Everything from clean streets to removing those with severe mental health illness off our streets, removing the encampments, we had to balance that out. But to me, that was a success. More to do, but we're moving in the right direction.
Schlott: And it does seem like crime is down on a lot of measures, but that public perception might not have caught up with that. Why do you think that's the case?
Mayor Adams: Well, a number of things. High profile incidents. High profile incidents really shakes the consciousness of New Yorkers. And there are three areas that I believe they have hurt the perception problem. Random acts of violence. It could be a small number, but if you're a woman walking down the block and someone punches you for no reason at all, it just really gives you the fear of being unsafe. And then if you read about it, now you're feeling concerned.
Second, people with severe mental health illness. That presence of seeing someone or reading about someone pushing a citizen to the subway tracks, slashing them, we had the incident in Manhattan where a person with severe mental health illness stabbed three people. That really rocks your feeling of being safe. And lastly, repeated offenders. We have a small number of people who are repeating crimes over and over again. Our criminal justice system is broken and they're not really helping with the issue that people are not feeling safe.
Schlott: And one thing that I've kind of sensed as a New Yorker is, I don't know if it's a lack of chivalry or a bystander effect issue, but it does feel like, when I first moved here I felt safety in numbers and people around me might stand up for me if something went wrong and that decreasingly feels like the case. And I've spoken to some of my friends and I think they kind of feel the same way. It's kind of everyone's on their own and people look away. I wonder if you feel that that's also a phenomenon that's going on.
Mayor Adams: Well, two things. Number one, you are extremely smart for moving to New York because this is the best place to live. But yes, the act of getting involved and that was not always the case. You would see, as you use the term chivalry, you would see that if someone was the victim of an offense, the New Yorkers would normally run towards them. I think it's unfortunate that we believe helping is having your camera out and taking a video of it. That is not helping someone.
And I think that we need to really have a campaign talking about how it's important to look after your fellow New Yorkers because there've been a number of cases where people were the victim of an incident, a criminal incident, and people just stood by. Sometimes they just walked by. Now, it didn't help what happened on the train station where someone was charged for getting engaged and getting involved.
All of this plays into how people respond when they see someone that's a victim of a crime. But a lot of New Yorkers do. Now, I don't want to do a broad brush of New Yorkers. A lot of New Yorkers would do the right thing. They'd make the call. They'd call 911. They'd call an ambulance. They'd yell [and] scream, hey, stop that. So we do have cases where New Yorkers help out.
Schlott: And have there been any initiatives that you've wanted to pass while in office that have gotten held up? And if so, why?
Mayor Adams: Several. We have an extremely left-leaning City Council. Many of our initiatives we have been able to get through, but some important ones we were not. The How Many Stops Act. That was a terrible decision to tie up the time for police officers and not allowing correction officers to handcuff prisoners when you're transporting. That was hurting what we're doing around public safety. Things we want to do around housing.
We lost 20,000 units of housing when we passed our City of Yes initiative. We could have gotten 20,000 more units of housing. But the City Council held up much of that. And so there are a few initiatives that we think are important. Like they're getting ready to veto two important bills. One is we want to stop increasing the cost of groceries on low-income New Yorkers who have to have food delivered to them. That's an important bill. And they overrode our veto.
And as well as making sure you don't have vendors all over our city. Neighborhoods have been complaining about vendors and illegal vending all over your city, disrupting our bridges, our roadways. And we're fighting to stop that. But the City Council sees it differently. So there's a few initiatives that were important to improve the quality of life of our city that they have gotten in the way of doing so.
But we've got a lot done in spite of that. And that's what I think is so important. We realize the challenges. So when we knew we had to build more houses, we did that. When we knew we had to bring more jobs to the city, we did that. More jobs in the city's history in New York. And when we knew we had to bring down crime, we did that. And so we pushed forward in spite of those obstacles.
Schlott: And speaking of quality of life, can you tell me a little bit about your expectations and hopes for the Q-Team initiative?
Mayor Adams: Two, because you raised a good question about the perception of crime. And when you look at what we started to do in the beginning of 2022, it was important to us to deal with the perception of crime and homelessness. We had people sleeping in trees in New York, sleeping on the side of highways and roadways, tents, cardboard boxes. And you look around the city, for the most part, it's not there.
We have cleaned up those areas. But we want to go even further. We wanted to deal with the abandoned vehicles, open drug use, illegal dumping, loud music playing, all of those things that you don't hear around Gracie Mansion. So I like to believe if you don't hear it around Gracie Mansion, you should not hear and see it around Mother Gaston Boulevard or South Jamaica, Queens or the South Bronx.
And that's what our quality of life initiative is, 1,500 officers who are going out, using the COMPStat model of saying, here's your precinct. You must make sure within your precinct and within your sector that you don't have quality of life issues that you're passing by. Because far too often, it was an anything goes mindset. You would see an abandoned car, nothing was being done about it. And now we are making sure that all 311 calls are answered. There's a 41 percent decrease in how long it takes for us to answer these jobs. It's a combination of making people physically safe and making people feel safe.
Schlott: And what do you say to critics who have raised concerns about expanding an unwillful commitment for people with mental health issues and potential civil liberties violations with that?
Mayor Adams: Right. And they are not in alignment with what New Yorkers want. If you were to go to the average New Yorker in the city and say, what do you feel about a person who can't take care of themselves, who is in danger to themselves and others, and they are not taking their medication, do you believe we should involuntarily take them inside and give them the help? The overwhelming number of New Yorkers are going to say yes.
There is a large portion of New Yorkers who are dealing with some form of mental health issue. Many of them are getting the help that they need. Many of them are using medication that they need. But there's a small portion that they are in danger to themselves and others. Those are the ones that push people to the subway track, that slash innocent victims, that attack innocent victims, or that's just not taking care of themselves. And they are harming themselves. They're crowding our emergency rooms. They're waiting until they are in a severe state of illness before they get care.
We are saying let's get ahead of that. And so those critics who are saying we should not do that to all people who are dealing with mental health illness, what they're failing to understand, we're not. We're saying that small number that needs that extra help, we're going to do so. We're already doing clubhouses. We're already doing the Bridge to Home program to put people in a home. We already moved a thousand people off our subway system into permanent housing that are dealing with mental health illness, and 2,500 from the street.
So we're doing all these other programs, but we can't ignore those who don't know they need care and refuse to get care. And we're doing the same thing with substance abuse, because we saw the success of many people who say nay to us, then started saying yay to us in Albany. We're now saying the same thing for those who are dealing with substance abuse. Some people don't know they need care. They won't go to the treatment centers. They won't get the help that they need. We can't just ignore them and leave them on the streets.
Schlott: And I'm curious to hear what your opinion is on Zohran Mamdani's history about NYPD, and the fact that he has historically tweeted to defund the police, and now he is attending a fallen officer's funeral recently. What do you make of that change of tone from him?
Mayor Adams: I think it's the highest level of hypocrisy, and that entire posture of I'm going to say whatever I need to get elected. Prior to the campaign, he was pandering to his voting bloc by saying defund the police, do all these horrific things on public safety, then you get elected, and now you change your tune to something else. It's clear that he would say anything that's needed to get elected. The danger is not only who he is as a candidate, but his platform.
He's part of the DSA. The DSA, they hate our way of life. They have made it clear that there shouldn't be any jails. They want to empty out Rikers Island. 7,400 of the most dangerous inmates in our city, if not the state. They want to empty them out of jail. He doesn't want police responding to domestic violence incidents. That's one of the top causes of police injuries, and one of the most dangerous jobs an officer can go on. He doesn't believe police officers should be dealing with mental health, responding to mental health issues. That's extremely dangerous.
Officer Mora and Rivera were assassinated while going to a domestic violence job. His lack of understanding of public safety is going to endanger public safety. He keeps going back and forth. You don't know which Mamdani you're dealing with at the time. His party, DSA, what they stand for, what they represent, don't believe in family, [they] believe that prostitution should be legalized.
I don't want to go out of my home and see a young man, young teenager, standing on the corner selling his body, or a young girl being forced into sex trafficking. It's just a lack of understanding of how we're not going backwards. I know what Times Square looked like when I was growing up. I knew what these communities, Long Island City and others, looked like during those times. We can't go backwards in our city.
Schlott: And speaking of the DSA platform, I'm with you that a lot of Madani's proposals are very pie in the sky and probably not actionable, but on the flip side, the affordability issue is a very real thing. It speaks to a lot of New Yorkers, especially young New Yorkers. So what proposals or solutions do you have to counter his that might be appealing to them?
Mayor Adams: Right. And it is a real issue. Affordability is an issue in our city, our state, and our country. And the worst thing could happen, growing up in poverty, I know what it is to have someone promise me something that they can't deliver on. It's wrong, it's hurtful, and it's harmful. And so what do we do? First, what we have done already. We put $30 billion back in the pockets of New Yorkers. I like to say it, I can't reduce the price of bread, but I could put bread back in your pockets.
We're paying off medical debt, number one cause of bankruptcy. We are reducing the cost of the reduced fare MetroCard, paying college tuition for foster care children. In New York, no low-income New Yorker pays any income tax. We were able to get it wiped out, no income tax at all. And then if you have a child, prior to my administration, you were paying $220 a month for childcare. You're now paying less than $20 a month for childcare.
So what we have done, we have not given New Yorkers a pie in the sky, particularly young people. What we're doing, we're restructuring college loans. It's going to save $3,000 a year for undergrad, $7,000 a year for post-undergrad education. So we are actually dealing with the affordability issue and not broken promises. We don't have anything to do. We can't raise income tax on 1 percent of New Yorkers, high-income New Yorkers, and we won't promise that because we don't do that.
Assemblymen do that. They have that responsibility. He's an assemblyman. He's not getting it done. And so all the things that he's promising, he could have done as an assemblyman, which he did not do. And you really can't do much if you're missing 50 percent of the vote that takes place in Albany. You're not up there to do your actual job. And so that's the difference of what we're saying. And what we want to do in the future, continue to build more affordable housing, continue to find ways to put money back in the pockets of New Yorkers.
Schlott: And one final question for you. I'm curious to hear what you think your biggest mistake was in your first term and how you would govern differently in a second term.
Mayor Adams: I say it over and over again. You don't govern in this city where you're dealing with major crises. Many mayors had to deal with one crisis. Bloomberg had to deal with 9/11, de Blasio dealt with COVID. We had to deal with multiple. The COVID crisis we had to face, we also had to face 237,000 migrants and asylum seekers that the federal government required us to take necessary steps and the city government required us to house, feed, clothe, educate 50,000 children. The crime crises, all those crises, you make bad decisions.
There were people I trusted I should not have trusted. There were people I put in positions that I should not have put in positions. But you try to make the best decision for New Yorkers. And when you look at those mistakes of judgment and mistakes in making the right calls and say, "Okay, well, how did you do even in spite of that?"
I moved the city forward. More jobs in the city, in the city's history. Crime is at some of the lowest numbers in the city's history. Our children are being educated at a rate faster than the state. Our recovery economically, our economy has not been stronger. Broadway had the best twelve months in the history of the city. So in spite of the errors and the missteps and the mistakes, I got up every day like New Yorkers do.
I'm a resilient New Yorker that never surrenders, never quits. And you know, I'm sure you go to the average New Yorker and say, hey, did you drop the ball this year? Last year? They're going to say, you're darn right. But they got up. They may have hit the snooze button, but they still got up and they did their job every day. And that's what I did as the mayor. Working class, blue collar mayor delivering for the city.
Schlott: Well, Mayor Adams, thank you so much for taking the time and for having us here at your home. It's been a pleasure.
Mayor Adams: Thank you.
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