John Catsimatidis: Well, we have the mayor of the City of New York calling in, Eric Adams. And, Mr. Mayor, welcome to WABC.
Mayor Eric Adams: Great to be on with you, Rita.
Catsimatidis: Governor Paterson is here.
Mayor Adams: I don't know who else is in the studio, but it's great being on with you.
Catsimatidis: And, Mr. Mayor, you have said many times over, give us a state of the city, and you're concerned about certain things that are going to be happening. And you tell us where we are.
Mayor Adams: Well, I think the state of the city is clear when you do an analysis of what we've accomplished in the last four years, including bringing down crime. All of the commissioners from Commissioner Sewell, to Commissioner Caban, to Commissioner Tisch, all of them did an amazing job. They fed off the success of the previous commissioners. And, as you see, we had one period over the last week with 12 days of no homicides in the city.
But when you add that to crime on our subway system, it's the lowest it has ever been. 25,000 illegal guns removed off our streets, decreases in the major crime categories. It was what I ran on, public safety. You know my quote, “Public safety is a prerequisite to prosperity.” And I delivered for New Yorkers.
And the second area that was important was housing. Do you know we built more housing than any mayor in the history of the city? And we zoned the city to build 433,000 more units of housing. That is more than 12 years of my good friend Michael Bloomberg, eight years of my friend de Blasio combined. In four years, we did what they couldn't do in 20 years.
And every other area, more jobs in the city's history. We broke the record 11 times. More small businesses in the city's history. Removing dirt bikes, illegal cars off our street, over 100,000. And encampments, removing encampments off our streets so we don't look like other cities. And so when you start to add up, what we did in four years from containerization to removing rats, complaints are down, downing shoplifting.
This city is moving in the right direction. I'm turning a city over to the next administration that's in good shape. All I can say is don't screw it up.
Rita Cosby: Yeah, by the way, powerful statement. You know, one of the things you just said, Mr. Mayor, this is Rita. It's great to talk with you. You know, you brought up about the encampments. And obviously the incoming mayor has talked about not doing the sweeps of the homeless encampments. I know you've been concerned about it, a lot of people are. Explain what that could do to a city.
Mayor Adams: Yeah, and it's so true. And, you know, I want to be clear. My job is not to critique and criticize the mayor and everything that happens in the city. And I'm not going to do that. I didn't want anyone to do that to me. But I'm going to be vociferous when it comes down to those things that endanger us or quality of life. Such as removing 3,000 dangerous inmates out of Rikers Island. That's the wrong thing to do. They're going to prey on those communities that put them in Rikers Island in the first place.
And the encampments concern. You can look at other cities and see the results of people living on the streets, using drugs, severe mental health issues, relieving themselves on the streets. That's not what we want in our city. And we have hundreds of photos of what blocks, neighborhoods, under railroad tracks. I told the team to document what we did and people need to see the qualitative difference on our streets based on our homeless encampment campaign.
It wasn't sweet to take dignity away from people. It was a humane thing to do. And I know a lot of people who are talking about reversing what we have done. They never went into an encampment and saw the conditions that people are living in. Stale food, human waste, drug paraphernalia, schizophrenic, bipolar behavior. People should not live that way. And it was the right thing to do. And I'm hoping the incoming mayor understands he should not reverse that of what we've accomplished.
Cosby: Judge Weinberg.
Judge Richard M. Weinberg: Mr. Mayor, it's good to talk to you again.
Mayor Adams: Hi judge. How are you?
Judge Weinberg: I'm fine. I have to tell you something. To me, you're the number one public citizen of the great City of New York, and I want to commend you for a great mayoralty. You had great appointments. You kept your commitment on public safety, on quality of life, on economic development, on housing, and God bless you for that.
And I think your role in the future is to hold the future administration respectfully, but responsibly accountable for what's going to happen, because, for example, on the encampments. That is a public health crisis in the making, and nobody's been talking about that, Mr. Mayor. In San Francisco and L.A., you had diseases that came back that were banned for decades and decades and decades by medical science, and they come back with homeless on the streets. What say you?
Mayor Adams: Well said. And you look at some of these policies that's coming out of the Democratic Socialists of America, who are just a group of mean people and just really don't understand our city. Many of them are gentrifiers that just have come here and don’t have real roots in the city. And they don't know what the 70s were like. They don't know when landlords walked [inaudible] created, particularly for low-income New Yorkers. I lived through that.
And so, when you hear people say you're going to decriminalize prostitution, after all the work we've done to get these young girls and boys no longer on the streets selling their bodies and harming themselves and sex trafficking. When you hear people making these decisions without a full understanding that we were already there. New York has already navigated those terrible conditions, and we were able to move us forward. And now, to put these policies back in place is just harmful for our city.
Something simple as you hear everyone talking about one of the number one things the mayor elect stated, freezing rent. Think about middle, low-income New Yorkers, 18-unit buildings. You freeze the rent for four years, who's going to pay the increases in taxes? Who's going to pay the increases in repairs? Who's going to pay for the increases in con ed for gas bills?
If you don't upkeep buildings with a moderate increase in rent, what are you going to do to low- and middle-income New Yorkers? The American dream is property ownership. And if they walk away from those properties, what do they think is going to happen? And that's why you have a full understanding and scope of running a city this complex.
Cosby: Absolutely. By the way, that's why we need your voice. Mayor Eric Adams, I echo exactly what Judge Weinberg said. You know, you've done such a great job.
Catsimatidis: The one concern, Rita, I had is the other day he said that he's going to challenge ICE. Is he going to challenge ICE with the NYPD?
Cosby: Yeah. Where is that headed, Mayor Eric Adams? Because it's an interesting, you know, he said he would challenge ICE. And he also said that under no circumstance will he have the NYPD cooperate. And if, quote, “ICE crosses the line and does something illegal,” he didn't rule out arresting them. Where is that going?
Mayor Adams: Well, first of all, it's silly. And we need to separate rhetoric from actual action. And I've said this over and over again, and we need to fully understand this. ICE is not a criminal organization. And we need to stop treating them like them. They are a law enforcement entity that's sworn to serve and protect like others. Like, I don't like the IRS. You think I like having to pay taxes?
Catsimatidis: Don’t mention the IRS.
Mayor Adams: Right. But do you demonize them? Do you talk about when they go to collect taxes that pay for the goods and services, that we’re going to arrest them? Do you say that they're enemies? No. These are civil servants.
ICE, these are men and women who made the determination to do the job that the constitution calls them to do. Now, you may not like the job they do. No one likes the job of having to pay taxes. But you respect the civil servants who are doing the job. And so when you all of a sudden make it appear as though ICE, who's carrying out their constitutional roles, that they are the enemy of the people and that you are going to tell the NYPD not to collaborate with them to go after dangerous gang members like Tren de Aragua and others, what is wrong with people?
We need to stop the silliness of telling governmental agencies that they are criminalizing their roles when they are not doing that. I supported ICE doing their jobs correctly. There are things that I would love to see differently on a federal level, but for the most part, these were sworn men and women who were sworn to serve and protect the city and the country based on their constitutional obligations.
Catsimatidis: Governor Paterson?
Former Governor David Paterson: Mayor, when I left office in 2010, I tried to be very respectful toward my successor, Governor Cuomo, and his successor, Governor Hochul, but you may be in a very unique situation because the types of disagreements that people who once served might have with the present leader, there are a lot of things that leaders can do that aren't opposed and some of the information that you revealed here today is really the type of information that needs to be exposed about what possibly may be going on in the new administration.
So, I know that you would instinctively, like most of us, would kind of want to step back. “I had my time. I'm not going to interfere with anyone else.” But the dangers that are being described here, to me, are so immense that I would encourage you to think it over.
Mayor Adams: And you're right, in the totality of what this DSA and their agenda can do to everyday New Yorkers on so many levels, on quality of life. We're going to have a real issue on what we're going to do with the closing of Rikers. It started out at $8 billion, now it's up to almost $16 billion. Think about that, $16 billion to open four more small jails instead of dealing with the real issue, and that's those with mental health issues, that we should have a state-of-the-art mental health facility and not spend $16 billion to build new jails in our city. That, mindfully, can't fit the population that we have. It's just unbelievable.
But when you look at legalization of decriminalizing prostitution, when you look at the encampment issues, when you look at turning your backs on charter schools when you're seeing great results in charter schools instead of supporting them, when you look at disbanding SRG, the unit that went into 345 Park Avenue when we had a shooter come in, when you're unwilling to say you're going to increase the 5,000 new officers that we allocated the budget for, these are quality of life issues.
When you go after millionaires and say you don't need them in the city, where they pay over 51 percent of our taxes, and that's how we have teachers and firefighters and pave our streets. The lack of understanding that idealism collides with realism when you have to govern a city and provide for working-class people. These are real issues.
And so, I'm not going to be there to critique the mayor on everything, but I am going to talk about quality-of-life issues because New Yorkers need to be informed of when there are real quality of life issues facing their city.
Cosby: 100 percent. Mr. Mayor, thank you. We love you, and we hope we talk with you again real soon. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
Catsimatidis: And thank you for looking out for all New Yorkers, past, present, and future.
Mayor Adams: Thank you very much. You've got a real lineup there. You know, you've got the judge, you've got Rita, you've got David, you've got Cats. This has got to be the number one show on the air.
Everyone: It is.
Cosby: Boy, you are so smart, Mr. Mayor.
Catsimatidis: This is the all-star team here. Maybe we'll let you play on the team one night.
Cosby: Yeah, you've got to come visit us again. Mr. Mayor, thank you.
Catsimatidis: We've got a microphone for you, Mr. Mayor.
Cosby: Thank you, we love you.
Catsimatidis: Thank you so much.
Mayor Adams: Take care.
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